Gotcha!

design Letterbox | curator Robyn Annear | venue City Gallery, Melbourne

Between 1972 and 1994, scores of celebrities had their handprints (and footprints) immortalised in cement at the entrance of McEwans hardware store in Melbourne. Shopping for a hammer or a hair dryer, you’d step on the prints of actors, musicians, sportspeople, writers, dancers, politicians, an astronaut – even a racehorse. Gotcha! presents 40 of the surviving concrete prints, together with stories of the celebrities who made them.

The design of Gotcha! focussed on the idea of ‘fleeting fame’ – highlighting the fact that for many of the ‘celebrities’ their cement print is all that is remembered of them. And so the starburst, that symbol of novelty and excitement, became the central motif through both the exhibition identity and design. Curated by renown historian and author Robyn Annear.

Exhibition Photography | Tobias Titz