Unclassified is presented on the unceded lands of the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung and Bunurong peoples of the Kulin Nation, the Traditional Custodians of the country on which Kew Asylum was built and on which this exhibition takes place

We pay our respects to their Elders past, present, and emerging, and acknowledge that sovereignty was never ceded.

This exhibition examines the histories of t hose who were classified, confined, and rendered invisible by institutional systems of power. We recognise that the same colonial structures that built and governed

the asylum also dispossessed, pathologised, and sought to erase the cultures, languages, and ways of knowing of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. These histories share the same logic.

In questioning who has held the power to define what is normal, this exhibition also acknowledges the ongoing strength, knowledge, and presence of First Nations peoples, whose connections to this land continue beyond and despite those systems of classification.