RAGGED & TAGGED & FLAGGED Caroline Chisholm, Domesticity and the Victorian Goldfields by Dr Flossie Peitsch

This exhibition/installation features a series of white household pillowcases – embellished with simple quilting designs using once fashionable burgundy damask table napkins hung like ‘flags’ zig-zagging across the exhibition space like a clothesline. Attached to them many paper parcel tags inscribed with the names or positions of unheralded women – living and dead – who are deemed significant by the authors of the tags, giving them the appearance of the tails of kites. On the walls, artistic facsimiles of hand-crafted, hooked rag floor-rugs, bearing traditional slogans or abstract patterns in traditional suffragette/feminist colours. These ‘floor rugs’ are reminiscent of the hooked floor rugs of the1800s era which women crafted from recycled household clothing, now stripped into rags. Visitors will also be invited to add their own inscribed tags to those already part of the installation as a fun and effective memorial to ordinary women, doing ordinary tasks during the period of the Victorian goldfields.

Dr Flossie Peitsch is currently undertaking a Doctor of Philosophy through Federation University, Ballarat and this exhibition forms part of her thesis on Caroline Chisholm.

Opening: 2pm 27 June 2026

Free community workshop: 2pm Sunday 19 July 2026. Make a mini finger-hooked rug with Dr Flossie Pietsch.

Featured image: Dr Flossie Peitsch, Reinstate her, 2025. Work in progress.