Research Symposium: Opening up the Fashion Archive

Hosted by UTS Gallery & Art Collection and UTS Fashion & Textiles

11–12 March 2026
UTS Gallery and UTS Building 6

Opening up the Fashion Archive is a two-day research symposium convened alongside the exhibition No place for Mannequins: Remaking the fashion archive, UTS Gallery, Gadigal Nura/Sydney (12 February – 24 April 2026), curated by Todd Robinson (UTS) and Ricarda Bigolin (RMIT).

Given the complex and evolving nature of contemporary archives, Opening up the Fashion Archive considers the archive as a dynamic, contested, and relational field. It aims to explore how scholars, curators, practitioners, archivists, and researchers are working with material, digital, and social forms of archival engagement—actively remaking, rethinking, and reimagining archives and archival practice.

Banner image: Femke de Vries in collaboration with Youngeun Sohn, Telling Tremors: “Sheep have good memories” (moving image still), 2025. Courtesy the artists.

Symposium Program

Day 1: Wednesday, March 11

9.30–10.00am

Acknowledgement of Country and Symposium Reception

10.00am–11.00am

Floor talk and an index of wearing and reading fashion archives publication launch + Q&A with No place for mannequins: Remaking the fashion archive exhibition curators Dr Todd Robinson (UTS) and Dr Ricarda Bigolin (RMIT)

Location: UTS Gallery, Building 6, Level 4

11.30-1.00pm

Session 1 | Practice and Preservation: Material and Intangible Histories

Chair: Dr Jesse Stein, UTS

Presenters:

Dr Ailsa Weaver, independent researcher: Buried in Sunshine: Practice and the Leigh Bowery Archive
Dr Laura Gardener, RMIT: Intangible and Tangible Histories in the Brand Archive
Frances Harvey, UTS: Absence in the Archive: Unearthing 19th Century Burial Clothing in British Museum Collections

Location: DAB Research Seminar Space, Building 6, Level 6, Room 06.06.038

Parallel Session 1 | Design, Culture, and Consumer Practices for Sustainable Futures | Hosted by the Centre of Excellence in Sustainable Fashion + Textiles

Chair: Dr Lisa Lake, UTS Director, Centre of Excellence in Sustainable Fashion + Textiles

Presenters:

Dr Angelina Russo, Founder and CEO, Fleurieu Made: Product Passports as Participatory Fashion Archives: Transforming Regulatory Compliance into Consumer-Led Knowledge Production
Nicole Crouch, UNSW: Decolonising Commercial Textile Print Design Style Categories

Location: Centre of Excellence in Sustainable Fashion + Textiles, Building 6, Level 6

1.00-2.00pm

Lunch + UTS Gallery performance | S!X Guignol: The Doll’s Wardrobe*

Presenters:

Dr Denise Sprynskyj & Dr Peter Boyd, School of Fashion and Textiles, RMIT

Location: UTS Gallery, Building 6, Level 4

*Free admission, all welcome

2.00-3.30pm

Session 2 | Archiving the Digital

Chair: Dr Andrew Burrell, UTS

Presenters:

Dr Suneel Jethani, UTS: Building wearable technology archives with expanded metadata
Karl Björn Edvard Eriksson, UTS: Archival Hallucinations
Martina Ponzoni: d_archive

Location: DAB Research Seminar Space, Building 6, Level 6, Room 06.06.038

4.00-5.30pm

Session 3 | Curating Fashion, Dress Collections and Archives | Guest Powerhouse Panel

Convenor: Roger Leong, Senior Curator, Powerhouse Museum

Speakers:

Alexandra Barter, PhD Candidate, UTS
Glynis Jones, Curator, Powerhouse Museum
Margot Riley, Curator, State Library of New South Wales

Location: DAB Research Seminar Space, Building 6, Level 6, Room 06.06.038

5.30-6.30pm: Refreshments

Location: DAB Research Seminar Space, Building 6, Level 6, Room 06.06.038

6.30-8.30pm: International Zoom sessions

Parallel Zoom Session 1 | Remaking Archives: IMAGE BODY TEXT

Chair: Dr Laura Gardner, RMIT

Presenters:

Martina Alia Mascia, XEROXED, Università Iuav di Venezia: Wearing the Archive: Practice-Based Approaches to Archival Research through the XEROXED Expanded Edition 00
Anna Baumgart, artist and independent researcher: The Wearing of Images
Sally Bjerre Gaarde, Swedish School of Textiles, University of Borås, Sweden: Interlacing the Collection: On Referencing Fashion Heritage through Stitch
Carlo Chiusi and Federica Forti, Università Iuav di Venezia: Digital Twins and Atmospheric Bodies: New Sensory Scenarios for Archives, Museums, and Fashion Retail

Parallel Zoom Session 2 | Living Archives, Making and Feeling: Feminist, Ecological, Heritage and Decolonial Practices

Chair: Dr Remie Cibis, RMIT

Presenters:

Dr Clizia Moradei and Alessandra Vaccari, Università Iuav di Venezia: A-Live Archive: What Becomes of a Garment’s Life?
Hanka van der Voet, RMIT/ArtEZ: All Work is Women’s Work
Wonne Scrayen, 1 Granary writer and independent researcher: Palpable papers

Day 2: Thursday, March 12

10.00–11.30am

Session 1 | Practices of Noticing: Archiving Waste, concealment and representations of self

Presenters:

Dr Rachael Cassar, UTS: Caching Material Culture; concealment and archival narratives
Chantal Kirby, RMIT: Gleaning Practice: Exploring Archives Fashion Waste
Remie Cibis, RMIT: The Radical Power of Wearing: From Passive Reception to Embodied Refashioning

Location: UTS Gallery + Courtyard, Building 6, Level 4

Parallel Session | Patternmaking Workshop**

Alessandra Varisco, Università Iuav di Venezia: How to Counter-Archive a Paper Pattern? An Intuitive Pattern Making Approach to the Fashion Archive

Location: Building 6, Level 6, 6.77 Sewing Studios

**Please note: Patternmaking Workshop admission is limited and is not included in Symposium ticket.

12.00–1.30pm

Session 2 | Making and Remaking: Archives, Craft, and Fashion Futures

Chair: Dr Rachael Cassar, UTS

Presenters:

Dr Cecilia Heffer, UTS: Singing Lace: Sonification of a Fashion Archive / Reimagining Lost Identities
Mandy Nichols, RMIT: Take Two: Archival Garments, Costume, and Film as a Production Site in Contemporary Fashion Practice
Roger Tait, independent researcher: Moulding the bodice: The Knack and the Know-How A study of 201 years of tailoring methods

Location: DAB Research Seminar Space, Building 6, Level 6, Room 06.06.038

2.30–4.00pm

Session 3 | Challenging the Archive: Rethinking Fashion Collections

Chair: Dr Karena de Perthuis, Western Sydney University

Presenters:

Dr Maria Quirk, Curator, Collections and Research, and Charlotte Botica, Assistant Curator, Fashion and Textiles, National Gallery of Victoria: Fashion beyond the Garment: Re-Shaping NGV Fashion Archive
Dr Laini Burton, Griffith University: An Anarchival Challenge to First Nations Masks within the Fashion Archive
Kathryn Hunyor, UTS: A Unique Model: How the Kyoto Costume Institute breaks the archive mould

Location: DAB Research Seminar Space, Building 6, Level 6, Room 06.06.038

4.00–5.00pm: Symposium Wrap-up

Location: DAB Research Seminar Space, Building 6, Level 6, Room 06.06.038

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