The foreign and the out-of-place in Melbourne’s early modern collections

Abstract

The essays in this issue take eleven objects in Melbourne collections to examine the concepts of foreignness and the out-of-place in the early modern world. The objects were made over a span of almost four centuries, from the 1400s into the 1700s, and in regions as far apart as England and the Philippines. They include manuscripts and sculptures, textiles, drawings, and prints. Some were made as art-works, while others began as practical objects with a specific use. The research presented here developed from a joint project between the Universities of Manchester and Melbourne, titled ‘ Foreign Bodies ’ and focused on the early-modern art collections in both cities. ‘ Foreign Bodies ’ began in 2017, and brought together scholars and curators from all over Australia and the United Kingdom to explore ideas of foreignness, exteriority, exclusion, and distance as manifested in early-modern art and culture. To date there have been two major outcomes from this work: the online exhibition ‘ Foreign Bodies ’ which presents objects from both cities (https://connectingcollections-manmel.com/) and a 2019 special issue of the Bulletin of the John Rylands Library (vol. 95, no. 2) with extended essays on objects in Manchester collections. The research essays presented here focus on Melbourne collections and are the final part of our project work. As we noted in the introduction to the 2019 volume, we chose ‘ Foreign Bodies ’ as a research theme both for its current and its early-modern importance. 1 Notions of the foreign and out-of-place are radically historically and socially contingent: they are shaped by contextual expectations of correct placement, appearance, or behaviour, and subtended by real or perceived exception to prevailing norms or conventions. As our research began, uncertainties associated with Brexit, the status of U.K. and Australian nationals identified as terrorists, and the Australian policy of off-shore refugee imprisonment were placing ideas about ‘ foreign ’ status and citizenship into sharp focus. As our work advanced, the protests in the wake of the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis on 25 May 2020 and the Black Lives Matter movement brought debates about inclusivity and structural violence to the fore, and the ways in which these issues can (and