Through relics and kitsch, image and memory, the Lifestyle: a sunshine state of mind exhibition explores the way Queenslander’s have lived meaningful lives from the 1800s to today. The exhibition, held at the State Library of Queensland, focuses its exploration of meaning through five main themes: wellbeing, home, expression, play, community, and hope.

There are many stereotypes and preconceived ideas of Queensland and Queenslander’s respectively. Without so much as directly addressing these stereotypes, Lifestyle simultaneously confirms yet subtly challenges such notion of the quintessential Queensland we think we know.

Featured in the exhibition are recorded video interviews from several Lifestyle ambassadors who share their personal accounts of how they have found meaning in their lives while living in Queensland. Each personal recount is as unique as the person telling the story, which highlights the diversity of people living in Queensland today and the complexity of Queensland’s ever evolving character.

Lifestyle includes a mesmerising collection of new and old relics, objects and heritage items from the library’s rare and restricted collections such as original artworks from Queensland’s early expressionist painters and weird and wonderful tourism posters from the 1950s.

Love notes written on apricot leaves in the Boer War make a beautiful appearance in the exhibition, as do donated home movies from the 1950s.

A personal favourite is the memento boxes each ambassador has created, which is composed of sentimental objects that collectively embody how each ambassador finds meaning.

Lifestyle: a sunshine state of mind will run at the State Library of Queensland until 21 October 2018.

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