Hyde Park Barracks

Museums of History NSW

Museum Film Installations

Three women appearing on large vertical screens in a dark exhibition space

“How could we best tell the story of the Barracks through the voices of those whose lives it touched?”

Local Projects – ADC Awards

The Hyde Park Barracks is a confronting living record of early colonial Australia. As part of the Museums of History NSW’s renewal of the site, three immersive installation works poetically tell human stories of the Barracks’ legacy, connecting us to place, past, empathy and First Peoples’ perspectives.

A 9-meter-long video projection, composed and designed by Anna Fraser, gradually reveals the Barracks’ use as a women’s asylum. The work weaves together haunting photography of the women with bureaucratic records that coldly document their existence.

In another room, intimate textures drift and flicker over the sculptural forms of dresses, made in collaboration with production designer Elizabeth Gadsby. The dresses and their imagery accompany the spoken words of their owners - the memories of young women journeying to the colony.

Life-size video portraits act as a coda to the museum experience, with descendants offering their own thoughts on the Barracks’ history, its impact on First Peoples’ communities, and their personal connection to the site.

Aerial mid-morning view of the Hyde Park Barracks.
A woman stands in a museum in front of a wide projected image of historical photography of elderly women and handwritten typography.
Projected onto an interior wall is some hand-written text and an old black & white photo depicting 4 elderly women.
A man stands in front of a museum display consisting of a white dress with blue video imagery projected onto it.
A white dress, in a wave-like curved shape, has blue imagery of water projected on its surface.
An extreme close-up of blue light projected onto a white dress.
An image of fire projected onto a white dress.
Three large vertical video screens sit side by side in a dimply lit room. Each screen depicts a person at 1 to 1 scale, standing in a black void.
On a video monitor inside a dimly lit room, a man holds his hands in front of him.
The image of a woman standing in a black void with a concerned expression on her face is depicted on a large video screen in a dim room.
Close-up of a video screen in a dim gallery space. The legs of a woman sitting on a chair in a black void can be see on the screen.