Rebel Heart: Love letters and other declarations

Love doesn’t follow the rules: it rewrites them.  

Rebel Heart: Love letters and other declarations is a tribute to defiant expressions of the heart, celebrating true stories of the rebels of romance from the past to the present. 

This stirring new exhibition explores romantic love – and its foil, heartbreak – through State Library Victoria’s extraordinary archive of soul-baring letters, intimate diaries and rare manuscripts, amplified in powerful new music commissions. 

Spanning centuries of connection and courage, meet the brave hearts who dared to love unapologetically – from same-sex couples in the Victorian era and a mid-century marriage at odds with the White Australia policy, to love outside marriage, across borders and online.  

Discover the love story of bushrangers Captain Moonlight and James Nesbitt, who met in Pentridge Prison; a mourning brooch from 1853 made of the woven hair of Anne Drysdale and Caroline Newcomb; and the legacy of Australian music icons Archie Roach and Ruby Hunter. 

The exhibition also spotlights modern expressions of the rebel heart, from mixtapes and DMs to fandoms and AI relationships, exploring how our search for connection is evolving in today’s age of digital intimacy and algorithmic matchmaking. 

Rebel Heart: Love letters and other declarations features powerful new music commissions by Australian artists Angie McMahon, Mindy Meng Wang, Mo’Ju and Amos Roach.

The exhibition also features work by Drew Pettifer, who responds to the story of Captain Moonlight, and work by Paul Knight, who looks to love’s future via AI.

Lose yourself in the Library’s infatuating series of Rebel Heart programs and events. 

Known for her unflinchingly intimate lyrics and transformative live performances, Angie McMahon has always written songs that speak to some essential truth: from the joy of falling in love, to the crushing pain of heartbreak, to what it means to live authentically in the world.

As part of Rebel Heart: Love letters and other declarations, McMahon has written an original song inspired by two brave hearts who lived entwined lives and whose artefacts are on display as part of the exhibition. They were Anne Drysdale and Caroline Newcomb, two pastoralist women who made a home together in Victoria in the 1840s, whose bond was so strong that they were buried together when they died.

Read more about Angie McMahon's original song and the story that inspired it.