Ned Kelly's Armour
The exhibition Kelly Culture features Ned Kelly's armour and explores
its development as a national icon. Today the armour maintains its potency
as a relic of both a defeated criminal and a fallen hero, an ambiguity
that will possibly never be reconciled. Kelly's helmet, in particular,
has become an icon that has embedded itself in the national psyche, a
mask onto which any number of projections can be made.
This exhibition presents the most complete suit of Ned Kelly's armour
ever displayed to the public, together with the other three suits of armour
worn by the members of the Kelly Gang, Joe Byrne, Steve Hart and Dan Kelly.
These suits of armour are displayed in their reconfigured states following
an historic exchange between the Library and Victoria Police in 2002.
Ned Kelly's armour is displayed for the first time with both shoulder
plates, following the Library's acquisition of a shoulder plate at auction
in 2001, the other being generously loaned by Museum Victoria. Through
a 3D digital animation of the armour created by Metraform, visitors to
the exhibition can view the individual pieces of armour from the inside
out and access new information
about its construction.
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