Exhibitions

Explore the history behind Elsie, Australia’s first women’s refuge. Founded in 1974 in Glebe, Gadigal Nura/Sydney, the home was established by a core group of feminist activists who sought to create a safe space for women and children fleeing domestic violence. This archival display offers a glimpse into the early stories of the Women’s Refuge Movement and the wider feminist activism of the 1970s in Australia and beyond.

Featuring rare photographs, periodicals, posters and audio materials, the display highlights the stories and struggles of women who challenged social and political structures to demand that domestic violence become a public issue.

A curated book display of relevant resources from the UTS Library collection is also available to borrow, offering deeper insight into the Movement’s history and legacy.

Visitors are invited to help bring history to life by colouring photos of the people who shaped the Women’s Liberation Movement. These images honour moments of courage, care, and collective resistance.

Curated in collaboration with UTS Gallery, this display complements Zanny Begg’s exhibition of new works Elsie (and Minnie), showing concurrently at UTS Gallery.

This September, join us in the Student Learning Hub to make a moth, an activity as part of our 2024 Creative in Residence program and Global Goals Month. 

Throughout the month, students are invited to create origami moths from recycled books and inscribe positive messages on their wings. Whether you choose to gift your creation to a friend, take it home, or contribute to our communal display, your crafted moth will be a symbol of care and kindness for both yourself and the community.

To welcome our 2024 Creative in Residence, Vita Cochran, and to introduce her residency, Library Eclipse, we invite you to immerse yourselves in the start of an extraordinary journey through the world of moths.  

Vita will weave enchantment into the fabric of our library, quite literally. Using her renowned hand embroidery skills, Vita will camouflage lifelike moths throughout our space, directly onto the upholstered furniture, and in other nooks and crannies, inviting visitors to explore and discover the beauty in the unexpected. The project will celebrate the wonder and intricacy of these quiet, mysterious and vulnerable creatures – moths. 

In collaboration with Vita, we invite you to join us outside the Library on Level 7 for an immersive experience where you can explore, learn, and unleash your creativity as you delve into the captivating realm of moths, and craft your own moth-inspired creations to contribute to our display. 

Don't miss this unique opportunity to connect with nature, art, and community. Come and be part of Crafting Nature's Marvels—a celebration of curiosity, creativity, and the fascinating world of moths. 

To celebrate a new year and the arrival of fresh faces with our buzzing bee-themed craft pop-up! While our entire library has been transformed into a hive of activity for orientation, we've carved out a special space just outside the UTS Library on level 7 for hands-on crafting.

As the heart of our university, we view the Library as our hive—a place where knowledge thrives and creativity flourishes. Join us for a bundle of activities designed to spark joy and unleash your inner child. Get crafty with bee origami, engage your mind with a buzz-worthy crossword inspired by the bee movie, indulge in some relaxing bee colouring, and dive into our drop in beeswax workshops, conducted in collaboration with UTS Sustainability.

Welcome to our hive! We're confident this semester will be nothing short of extraordinary.  Let's make it bee-utiful together!

In celebration of Vertigo Magazine’s 50th Anniversary, UTS Library and Vertigo bring to you an archival exhibition honouring half a century of fearless student journalism. 

Step into the vibrant world of Vertigo Magazine, where rebellion meets revelation, and unapologetic voices demand change. 

This exhibition explores the themes that shape Vertigo's legacy; Holding Powers to Account, where uproars shake the campus and the truth prevails; Forefront of Change, where uncomfortable truths and groundbreaking perspectives push boundaries; History Repeating Itself, where the past's echoes still resonate today; The 4th Estate!!!!, a backstage pass to the magazine's mischievous drama and cheeky critiques.  

Brace yourself for an exhibition that embodies the spirit of Vertigo, daring you to challenge the status quo, unleash your voice, and revel in the unstoppable power of student-driven journalism. 

This exhibition explores the lithographs by Robert David Fitzgerald from the monograph series Australian Orchids. The fourteen superbly detailed and coloured lithographs on display celebrate the creativity, technical mastery, and scientific knowledge of Australian botanical illustration in the second half of the nineteenth century.

Fitzgerld was a surveyor, engineer, and public servant, as well as a committed naturalist whose botanical work spanned the gap between amateur and professional botany and gained scientific acclaim.

Between July 1875 and October 1882, Fitzgerald released seven volumes of the Australian Orchids. Fitzgerald took twenty-four years (1875-1894) to complete this series. Together with lithographer Arthur James Stopps these volumes were published. Under Fitzgerald’s instruction, many artists hand-coloured each intricate lithograph plate using Fitzgerald's own coloured sample sheets.  

The exhibition invites you into the world of all things orchid, including botanical illustrations of the variants and interesting facts we bet you didn’t know. To celebrate UTS Drawing Circle's 10^th anniversary, current members of the club will contribute contemporary artworks in response to Fitzgerald’s research in celebration of this incredible flower.

A live-drawing event will take place alongside the exhibition on Friday, 5 May, in which members and guests of UTS Drawing Circle will come together and take inspiration from the lithographs to create their own works. Giving new life and meaning to Fitzgerald's original pieces.

Four parts of the second volume of Fitzgerald’s Australian Orchids resides in UTS Library's Special Collections, the digitised copies can be viewed in full here.

In celebration of the launch of our 2022 Creative in Residence Katy B Plummer, the BOOKWITCH invited you to be a guest at THE BIBLIOMANCY FEAST.  

BOOK WITCH is our friendly Library ghost who wants to be helpful to all of us. She invites us to consider that the world is wild and unknowable and that it is constantly speaking to us, offering to bring us into conversations that are intimate, playful and thick with meaning. 

BOOK WITCH uses bibliomancy as her starting point. Bibliomancy is an oracular divining tradition, whereby a seeker opens a sacred text at random, and looks for answers to life’s questions. The cards in her oracle were generated from text found in books borrowed from UTS Library.  

BOOK WITCH invited you to do the same at THE BIBLIOMANCY FEAST. Located outside the Library on Level 7 where she was dressed in her finest party attire, the BOOK WITCH helped you be more open to possibilities, generate new meanings and connections and find the answers you seek. 

THE BIBLIOMANCY FEAST was a physical engagement where you had the opportunity to make your own tarot card with the BOOK WITCH. 

If you couldn't make it on to campus here is all you need to know to do some bibliomancy at home: Bibliomancy Instructions. 

Acknowledgements 

BOOK WITCH was conceived and created on Gadigal land by Katy B Plummer for UTS Library 2022 Creative in Residence program. 

Coinciding with the release of the 36th UTS Writers Anthology, Left Turn on Red, this exhibit showcases selected excerpts from the publication displayed alongside artefacts which bring to life the personal narratives behind each story.

Throughout the exhibition we delve into tenderly hard truths of life’s brutality, a daughter’s generational gains and losses and the protective armour of a woman as she heads into the battle that is daily life.

Objects provided by the writers embody a literal fragment of each story, representing the intrinsic and central ideas being explored as the writers collectively expose universal human experiences.

UTS Writers' Anthology is an annual publication that showcases the best writing from emerging and established writers across UTS. The featured writers included: Lin Blythe, Verity Borthwick, Ant Carter, Pippi Cullinan, Melissa Gravitis, Hannah Ianniello, Kate Newton, Sophie Katherine Serafim and Emily Tran.

UTS Library and Vertigo Magazine joined forces once again.

Aligned with the theme of the volume ‘Anomaly’, the exhibition embraced the alternative and escape from conformity through exploration of reimagined realities and individual expression. 

Down the rabbit hole presented a selection of student work that explored the nonsensical situations where one might find themselves, in the pursuit of answers, solutions or knowledge. 

Each piece revealed moments of the fascinating, the surreal and absurd existentialism to be discovered when one descends deeper and deeper into a vortex of the artist’s creation. 

The little girl  

Just could not sleep  

Because her thoughts  

Were way to deep 

Her mind had gone  

Out for a stroll 

And fallen  

Down the rabbit hole. 

- Lewis Caroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland