As part of the Ballarat Heritage Festival, an event dedicated to honouring and re-energising the city's cultural history, Storylines V is an exhibition where visitors are invited to encounter history through an artistic lens. Experience how emerging artists reinterpret place, memory and narrative through visual expression.
This project displays works of second-year Bachelor of Visual Arts students invited to explore Ballarat's layered histories, diverse voices and hidden stories, often uncovering perspectives that extend beyond well-known local narratives. Through guided research and creative development, students produce Artist Books that blend historical investigation with contemporary visual arts practice.
The exhibition of works will be held at the SMB Library in the historic Old Gaol building, offering an evocative setting that deepens the connection between the artworks, Ballarat's past, and the contemporary voices responding to it.
Artist Books have a long history of being exhibited, collected, and valued within libraries, archives, and galleries as significant cultural objects. By combining visual and textual elements, such as drawing, printmaking, collage, painting, and mixed media, these books expand traditional storytelling and offer unique ways to document and reinterpret historical experience.
