Canvas Documentaries

Moving panorama and diorama pictures came to Australia and New Zealand during the gold rushes of the 1850s and 1860s. Entrepreneurs brought great lengths of canvas from Britain and America depicting nineteenth-century battles and sea and land journeys from England to India and Australia. Others showed nostalgic scenes of 'home', such as trips down the River Thames. Local artists, often working as theatrical scenic painters, showed pictures of the gold fields, the Burke and Wills expedition and the Murray River. Canvas Documentaries is the first detailed documentation of the Australian panorama industry. Mimi Colligan gives new insight into largely ignored visual and cultural influences that helped form the colonial experience.