Lest we forget…how we remember

With his enlistment on 17 February 1915, 25-year-old Ray Jones began a weekly correspondence with his family back home in Australia and with his sister Annie who from 1915 to 1919 served as a missionary in China.

The letters, judiciously numbered to alert his correspondents to items lost or gone astray, also contained a rich and varied collection of souvenirs from the front and from Jones’ sojourns in cities and towns throughout Europe including stints in Egypt, Gallipoli, France and Belgium and, thereafter in England where, because of persistent ear problems, he saw out the war.

The archive of 428 letters to and from Jones, and the entire collection of his wartime diaries, war journals, pamphlets, programs, newspaper clippings, photographs and objects are held in the University of Melbourne archives in the Baillieu Library.

Box 10 of this extensive collection contains a well-preserved champagne cork. A souvenir of Anzac Day 1918, this simple object was selected by Brook Andrew for display in his major new exhibition Sanctuary: Tombs of the Outcasts, on show at the University of Melbourne’s Ian Potter Museum of Art until August 9.

For artist Brook Andrew and Ian Potter Museum curator Vincent Alessi, this champagne cork evoked emotions not commonly elicited by war and conflict.

“When I first saw the cork it brought an enormous smile and a great sense of joy,” Mr Alessi says.

“Among the usual depiction of war as horrific and brutal, here was an object that spoke of happiness and good times.

“It revealed a real human element and also conjured up images of innocent celebration for the ending of something terrible and the promise of better times.

“It also raised questions about Ray Jones – what possesses someone to collect such disparate objects and why are they important? It was a real connection with the past and also with a person who I would never meet but seemed to begin to know much about.”

Brook Andrew’s Sanctuary: Tombs of the Outcasts focuses on stories which have been forgotten or are no longer prominent in the dominant Anzac narrative. The intention, according to Alessi, is to draw attention to the human experience of war through objects and archives which are not obvious and didactic. 

“Many objects in the exhibition remain purposefully open to interpretation,” says Alessi. “This is really important as both Brook and I wanted people to engage with the exhibition and think about conflict from a personal experience.

“Such a simple object, like a cork, enables this to happen. People will think about it in different ways and hopefully will also construct their own narrative when looking at it alongside other objects.”

www.archives.unimelb.edu.au
www.art-museum.unimelb.edu.au/exhibitions