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Exhibition Review
Peeling Back History: The Remembering Goodna Exhibition
Museum of Brisbane. Developed by: Brisbane City Council and the Queensland Department of Health, and in association with the Centre for Public Culture and Ideas, Griffith University.
Location: Brisbane City Hall. Temporary exhibition.
Visited: 2 November 2007
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In recent years, a growing dialogue between academic, public, and community history has brought us greater awareness of the complexities of institutional history, not least in the area of mental health. In the past, the trauma of mental illness was often compounded by incarceration and by methods of treatment interpolated with regimes of management, punishment, and control. On the other hand, many patients, as well as well-meaning staff and officials, were among those working to ameliorate the conditions of the mentally ill. Aiming to reflect this diversity of experience and perspective, an array of personal and official accounts was brought together to great effect in the Museum of Brisbane's 'Remembering Goodna' Exhibition. Goodna, Brisbane's mental hospital built in 1865, has passed through many incarnations, from insane asylum to mental health centre. The exhibition was an outstanding example of how a complex and deeply-felt history can be translated into the visual and aural world of the public and community museum exhibit, a considerable achievement that compelled one writer in the 'Share your Goodna story ...' book placed at the entrance of the exhibition, to comment:
There are so many stories we will never know but this display peels back our history, the layers of understanding which are the foundation of the present. And it is done in such a way as to honour the patients, clients, the people, who lived this story.
Over the past two decades and more, historians and curators working with histories of mental health have sought to 'peel back' the layers of institutional life by bringing to the fore previously marginalised stories. They have placed official accounts alongside case files, pictures, and objects, and in the context of the recollections of staff, family, and, most particularly, inmates. In putting together this exhibition, the Museum of Brisbane curator, Jo Besley, and her team drew from a range of materials but also contributed to the Goodna archive through the sharing stories book at the exhibition entrance, quoted above; by locating new objects and images to contribute to its history; and by recording the personal testimonies of various constituencies, including police. By combining individual and official accounts, as well as remarkable photographs and objects from Goodna's past, the team created a nuanced account of its long history from inception to present day. Their compassionate evocation of its complex history, from the inside as it were, reflects their commitment to both the value of historical research (in collaboration with historian Mark Finnane) and the importance of community voice. Their translation of this diversity into an engaging exhibition illustrated the capacity of best museum practice to convey complexity in visual form, and to engage the viewer in a visceral and embodied journey through 'history.' The task of preparing this exhibition must have been daunting and at times emotionally draining. Along with the Queensland Health Department (the industry partner in the project), several constituencies were strongly invested in the telling of Goodna's story. To their credit, the curatorial team succeeded in honouring each of these narratives while keeping their focus on several overarching themes: changes in mental health discourse, institutionalisation and its resistances, and trauma and hope, to name but a few. Recollections from patients, but also from staff and others, told of the profound ways in which memories continue to shape our present, while how we tell history continues to shape our understanding of the past. In the case of mental health, the legacies of the history of mental health are evident still in the deinstitutionalisation movement of recent decades, and for many experiencing a daily struggle on the streets of our major cities. Ultimately, the 'peeling back' of Goodna's history relies on the courage and willingness of ex-patients to talk about their experiences. In effect, they speak also for previous generations whose voices are often barely audible in the records. While some of the recollections of patients and ex-patients included in the Goodna exhibition have come from existing publications, most were especially recorded. Displayed on individual monitors, they became intimate, living windows onto a life on the inside, each illuminating something of the complex effects of institutionalisation on the psyche and the soul. Among these were the loss of liberty, the dehumanising rigidity of daily routine, and the infantilising of petty systems of rewards and punishments. Some described instances of terror, abuse, and trauma, their stories reflecting on the damage wrought when institutional culture goes awry, their personal accounts at times a chilling contrast to official images showing well-kept grounds (from 1909, under the influence of H. Byam Ellerton, considered essential to 'moral improvement'), and happy inmates at work and play in the care of smiling staff. Behind the scenes, as one ex-patient advises, lurked a more problematic reality, one known to those living inside Goodna, but that we, as outsiders, can only ever partially grasp. |
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The many objects on display in this exhibition were arguably among its most striking contributions to the communal process of remembering Goodna. Display cases containing personal belongings relinquished by incoming patients, for example—hats and gloves from the 1940s, books and glasses, the marks of a life left at the front gate—blurred the usual disjuncture between patient and person, between them and us. Among other objects, a straight jacket—just in case we were in any doubt as to the realities of physical restraint—a bed, a nurse's uniform, and various daily objects, as well as medical paraphernalia, tobacco and homemade cigarettes, the patients' currency. In another display, an imposing leather coat worn by one of the policemen who, from the 1930s to the 1950s, accompanied Central Queensland inmates in specially marked carriages on their eighteen hour railway journey down south to Goodna. And yet this aspect of the Goodna story, too, was shown to be more complicated than at first glance. Despite the imposing coat, and the accompanying photograph of its owner in his uniform, Patrick Murray and other policemen involved wore casual clothes on the journey in an effort the reduce the stigmatisation and fear experienced by their charges. Furthermore, the text accompanying his photograph was careful to advise that Murray felt a 'great deal of sympathy' for these patients. Similarly, the story book recorded an example of the sympathy, as well as guilt and doubt, felt by many of those charged with enforcing mental health legislation at a time when those committed were still largely ostracised by society:
I remember in 1977 taking a man to Goodna hospital. I was 20, a new policeman, he would have been 45 and committed by his wife and a doctor. He seemed sad and confused that his wife would do that to him ... I felt he did not deserve this treatment. The thought of it never left me!
The peeling back of Goodna history has also meant moving the public history of mental health in Queensland from the margins of Brisbane's collective memory, where it has continued to reside. Another writer in the Goodna story book remembered:
As a boy living in a happy home one of my tendencies was to belittle the name of Goodna patients by jokes, especially describing people in the public sphere as 'they should be at Goodna.'
Where historically the mental patient was a subject of ridicule, fear, and anxiety, similarly in Brisbane in the 1950s it was still a common saying to declare someone who behaved outside the norm or was beyond the pale be a candidate for Goodna. The dismissive humour of such remarks worked to disconnect members of the outside world from the lives of inmates, a demarcation that the above writer noted would soon dissolve in his own life when, as an adult going through a period of personal crisis, he was temporarily institutionalised at his psychiatrist's recommendation. |
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As the Goodna exhibition has been careful to point out, alongside disavowal and disinterest examples of public conscience do exist concerning the conditions at the institution. While the typical placement of the mental asylum some distance from early settlement expressed in concrete terms the historical desire to cast mental illness and its treatment to the margins, the exhibition noted that '[a]s long as there have been asylums, there have been opponents of their restraints and the abuse of power' (information panel, 'Speaking Up'). Where the asylum ideal as 'a place of respite and care' was not matched by government funds, over the decades Goodna in its various guises (from lunatic asylum to mental care centre) underwent a number of scandals, and, as a result, was subject to a series of inquiries. But while each echoed the need to dramatically improve conditions these recommendations were never fully carried out. Although the grounds were enhanced as part of the moral management aims of the turn-of-the-century, for example (because gardens and lack of visible fences were considered efficacious to the disordered mind), the wards remained overcrowded, with all the ensuing negative impacts on treatment outcomes, on the monitoring of staff, and on the possibility for modern and humane standards of patient care. As another entry from the story book recalled:
[I] worked as a new social work graduate in early 1970s. Exhibition a real reminder of how confronting it was to work there and try to make sense (???) of the conditions that many of the patients lived in ...
In providing not only an overview of mental health history and its implications for Goodna, but also an exploration of the complex relationship between memory and history, the Museum of Brisbane has been unflinching in its handling of a controversial history. By placing trauma and violence alongside accounts of friendship and respect, its exhibition has asked us to comprehend the multifaceted nature of institutionalisation, and its various legacies into the present. Nor is there any 'happy ending' to this process with the advent of deinstitutionalisation. Rather, this living history emphasises that local, state, and national responses to mental health remain a matter for urgent attention, and emphasises the point that an educated understanding of the complexity of that past can only be useful to that process. For all this, the exhibition concluded on an upbeat. Its final section comprised artwork by a number of people with recent experience of the mental health system and who were invited to participate in a Community Partnerships program run from 2005 until 2007. Using empty First Aid boxes both as conceptual frames and literal containers, participants produced lively works showing that, through art, painful memories can become translated into statements of resilience, humour, and hope.
FIONA PAISLEY
GRIFFITH UNIVERSITY
Images courtesy of the author |
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