3065 by Image Chasers (group exhibition)

Fresh from its Queen Victoria Market exhibition in March at the Brunswick Gallery, Melbourne’s Image Chasers Group now turns its sights to Melbourne’s first suburb, Fitzroy. From the late 1800s, ‘The Sticks’, as it was known then, was a poor and dangerous place. Home to the ‘Larrikins’, political radicals, and a red light sanctuary for the world’s oldest profession, it has taken more than a century to shake off its rough Victorian edges.

Today, a gentrified Fitzroy is home to the ‘hand made’ and the ‘self made’ as an older generation hangs on and watches new businesses transform the area bringing back to life its historic shops and warehouses with a creative buzz.

But in spite of Fitzroy’s new up-market status, a socially conscious face still keeps this area in check. Since the 1960s, the Atherton Gardens Estate housing commission flats have dominated the horizon, reminding us that a social divide still pervades the landscape, but also informing us through a bold sense of community that we can all live, work and play together.

This group exhibition explores through photography its people, environment, and how the present is still very much built upon the legacy of the past.