Tress And Treasures

Sydney Morning Herald

Thursday June 12, 1997

ALI GRIPPER

A lock of Mary Shelley's hair, William Bligh's diary entry on the day of the mutiny - the State Library's Possessed exhibition is both a personal and a scientific collection of more than 160 historical treasures.

"People have this idea that his-tory is about fables and myths and not about real people you can feel a connection with," says exhibition curator John Murphy. "When, actually, a lot of history is more immediate than we think. I want people to come in and get goosebumps as they look at [Frankenstein author] Mary Shelley's hair or pore over the journals of our first explorers."

State Library staff have been collecting items which relate to the history of Australia (and particularly of NSW) for 170 years. For nine months, Murphy combed meticulously through 9,000 shelf-metres of manuscripts, more than one million photographs, more than 2,000 oil paintings and about 80,000 watercolours, as well as portraits, architectural plans and maps in the library's storerooms to create the exhibition.

The result is a bowerbird's collection of marvels and curiosities, including a miniature coffin fashioned by Captain James Cook's crew, a pop-up book by Andy Warhol and a series of Japanese erotic dolls collected by David Scott Mitchell, a former library curator.

One of the themes of the exhibition is that Australia has not been anywhere near as cut off from the rest of the world as people may have believed. "The geographic isolation means there was an enormous amount of correspondence and inter-relationship with Europe," Murphy says.

For example, American writer Paul Bowles's correspondence to Australian composer Peggy Glanville-Hicks can be read - all 50 years' worth of it. There's also that classic letter from Bligh to his wife, Elizabeth, about the mutiny on his ship, HMS Bounty, in 1789, part of which reads: "28 April 1789 ... Just before Sunrise Mr Christian & the Master at Arms & several others came into my Cabbin while I was fast asleep, and seizing me tyed my hands with a Cord & threatnd instant death if I made the least noise."

Possessed: Treasures of the State Library of NSW runs until June 29. John Murphy will be give two talks: tonight (Friday) at 6pm, and again on Monday, June 23, at 10.45am. $15. Phone 9230 1500.