A new exhibition at the Art Gallery of South Australia offers a rare glimpse into how fashion and photography shaped identity, status and ambition in colonial South Australia.
Dressed Up: Fashion & Photography 1850s to 1920s spans seven decades of dramatic social change, drawing on AGSA’s rarely seen collections of historic dress and early South Australian photography. The exhibition features 33 garments, from silk wedding gowns to intricately beaded evening dresses, alongside more than 150 photographs capturing significant personal moments and everyday life in the early years of the South Australian colony.
New curatorial research brings to light the stories of the makers and wearers of these garments, many of them women whose contributions are being told for the first time. Contemporary First Nations works offer important perspectives on Aboriginal experiences that were often excluded from the colonial record.
First Nations perspectives
The Unbound Collective, a South Australian group of First Nations artist-academics and activists based at Flinders University, will present two short films: Domestic Waltz and Days of Our Lives, exploring the history of indentured labour in colonial homes. The collective comprises Ali Gumillya Baker, Simone Ulalka Tur, Faye Rosas Blanch and Natalie Harkin.
James Tylor’s daguerreotype series We Call This Place…Kaurna Yarta (2020) will also feature in the exhibition. Each of the four framed photographs depicts a significant Kaurna site, with the Kaurna place name engraved in cursive writing, reinstating Kaurna language and cultural connection to Country.
Photography in the colony
The exhibition traces the technological advances that made photography increasingly accessible. Arriving in South Australia in 1845 and initially available only to the wealthy, photography became more widely accessible with the advent of carte de visite prints, available at less than half the price of traditional daguerreotype portraits.
Maria Zagala, Curator of Prints, Drawings and Photographs at AGSA, notes that a growing number of photographers travelled to regional towns throughout South Australia, working from mobile studios. By the close of the century, over a hundred photography studios were operating between 1890 and 1900 in Adelaide, many of them located on Rundle Street.
The craft of dressmaking
The garments on display demonstrate the skill, craftsmanship and material knowledge of the women who lived and worked during this period, when clothing was often hand-sewn and reworked over time to match the latest fashions or accommodate bodily changes such as pregnancy.
Ingrid Goetz, Vernon-Roberts Assistant Curator of Decorative Arts & Design, says the exhibition reveals how fashion emerged from everyday life: “By looking closely at clothing we can learn about the maker and wearer, as well as the style and values of the individual and the society in which they lived.”
Events and programs
A panel discussion on 5 March 2027 will feature the exhibition curators, colonial dress and photography specialists, and artists from the Unbound Collective.
AGSA’s free activity space The Studio will transform into a fashion atelier in collaboration with Adelaide-based costume and set designer Renate Henschke, offering hands-on activities and a workshop space exploring fashion and costume-making.
Dressed Up: Fashion & Photography 1850s to 1920s is on display at AGSA from 5 December 2026 to 21 March 2027. Entry is free.
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