A guide to the public statuary of Melbourne, based on two walks around the inner city. Many public monuments are often just accepted as part of the scene, but each statue or memorial has a story to tell whether about the sculptor, or the person or event it commemorates, and all of them represent a small piece of Melbourne history.

Drawing on a wealth of primary and secondary sources, this book explores how far imperial culture penetrated antipodean city institutions. It argues that far from imperial saturation, the city 'Down Under' was remarkably untouched by the Empire.

Stroll or tram down Swanston Street, aptly referred to as 'Melbourne's iconic spine', and you will encounter contemporary architecture and street art vying for attention beside 19th century old-school bronze statues and buildings, permanent reminders of Melbourne's early British settlement. There are no visible signs of the people who first inhabited this land, however, you can engage with Aboriginal art in the Australian collection at the National Gallery of Victoria's Ian Potter Centre, at the rear of Federation Square. This self-guided tour begins at the northern end of Swanston Street: The University of Melbourne's Ian Potter Museum of Art. Before you start, you can enjoy a tea or coffee at the Potter cafe which hugs the north-east corner of the art gallery. Heading south, you will eventually reach the Yarra River where Swanston Street becomes St Kilda Road across Princes Bridge. The green expanse of the Royal Melbourne Botanic Gardens fans out to the left. To the right is the Arts Centre with its spire, and further on, the imposing bluestone building of the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV International) houses a range of international art dating from antiquity through to the 21st century. The tour finishes here. You will engage with many forms of art which ‘speak’ to each of us differently—a work of art may remind us of the past (a weathered facade or a history painting), represent the present, or project an imagined future. After you finish this tour along Swanston Street, you might ask yourself: Is Melbourne developing a distinctive artistic character representative of its past, present and perhaps even its future? Walks of Art self-guided walking tours spotlight urban pockets of Melbourne and Europe with a focus on art in galleries, on the streets and in public places. As the tours are self-paced, you can determine for yourself how long you spend at each stop. Sometimes looking at a facade is all that is required, or a lengthier time may be spent at a gallery or church. It's all up to you! Most of the galleries and museums of art on the tours are chosen because they either do not charge admission fees (except for temporary exhibitions), or if they do, the fee is deemed reasonable by the author. Again, you have the choice. Each walk includes: many works of art with detailed descriptions a map of the route opening and closing times of galleries/museums/churches/institutions photos/images at least one inexpensive eatery along the way that is a favourite of the author. The author is mindful of those art-lovers who are confined to a wheelchair. Walks of Art tours consider the ease of wheelchair access along the route. Traditional travel guide books are expensive, adding bulk and weight to travel bags. They can also be out-of-date very quickly. Walks of Art are distributed as e-guides to smartphones, iPads and Kindles—easy to buy and access, and eco-friendly! The author keeps a vigilant eye on any changes to opening hours, new installations, closures and/or removals of works of art. This means that information can be updated with the click of a button. However, for those travellers who prefer reading print on paper rather than on shiny screens, a pocket-book version of Walks of Art will be available in the near future. Look out for the next tour in the Walks of Art series which will focus on a pocket in Rome. All tours are intended for those individuals who, like the author, want to experience art ... slowly.

Twenty-four papers taken from an international conference on conservation issues concerning public sculpture and monuments held at the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1998. The papers are divided by subject into those that deal with approaches to art-historical, conservation and inventory issues, others which discuss technical approaches, case studies and discussions of the future and commissioning of new public sculpture. The authors derive from a range of different backgrounds including English Heritage, Imperial War Museum, art galleries, conservation architects, Historic Scotland, university departments.

In undertaking a systematic analysis of urban materiality, this book investigates one kind of material in Melbourne: stone. The work draws on a range of pertinent, current theories that consider materiality, assemblages, networks, phenomenology, resource and extraction geographies, memorialisation, maintenance and repair, place identity, skill, sensation and affect, haunting and the vitalism of the non-human. In appealing to the general reader, academics and students, this book provides a highly readable account, replete with evocative examples and fascinating historical and contemporary stories about stone in Melbourne.

Australians have much to celebrate in the hundred years of their citizenship, but also a good deal to be ashamed of. The authors argue that good citizenship depends on moral citizens, able to discern between what is worthy of respect and pride and what is shameful in national life. Galligan and Roberts from Uni.of Melbourne.

Memorials to Australian participation in wars abound in our landscape. From Melbourne's huge Shrine of Remembrance to the modest marble soldier, obelisk or memorial hall in suburb and country town, they mourn and honour Australians who have served and died for their country. Surprisingly, they have largely escaped scrutiny. Ken Inglis argues that the imagery, rituals and rhetoric generated around memorials constitute a civil religion, a cult of ANZAC. Sacred Places traces three elements which converged to create the cult: the special place of war in the European mind when nationalism was at its zenith; the colonial condition; and the death of so many young men in distant battle, which impelled the bereaved to make substitutes for the graves of which history had deprived them. The 'war memorial movement' attracted conflict as well as commitment. Inglis looks at uneasy acceptance, even rejection, of the cult by socialists, pacifists, feminists and some Christians, and at its virtual exclusion of Aborigines. He suggests that between 1918 and 1939 the making, dedication and use of memorials enhanced the power of the right in Australian public life. Finally, he examines a paradox. Why, as Australia's wars recede in public and private memory, and as a once British Australia becomes multicultural, have the memorials and what they stand for become more cherished than ever? Sacred Places spans war, religion, politics, language and the visual arts. Ken Inglis has distilled new cultural understandings from a familiar landscape.

Exploring fiction, film and art from across the USA, South America, Asia, Europe and Australia, New Suburban Stories brings together new research from leading international scholars to examine cultural representations of the suburbs, home to a rapidly increasing proportion of the world's population. Focussing in particular on works that challenge conventional attitudes to suburbia, the book considers how suburban communities have taken control of their own representation to tell their own stories in contemporary novels, poetry, autobiography, cinema, social media and public art.