HELD IN PLACE

How can a wall tell the story of Australia Post?

WHAT
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FROM ARCHIVE TO ARCHITECURE

Held in Place is a large-scale installation celebrating the history and imagination of postage through over 4,300 Australian stamps. Created by UnitedMake in collaboration with Australia Post’s Philatelic Team, the artwork transforms a simple wall into a vast, tactile archive of design, history, and memory.

Stretching across the central foyer of Australia Post’s Melbourne Support Centre, the piece reinterprets the nation’s story through the miniature artworks that once travelled across oceans and generations. Seen up close, each stamp reveals individual craftsmanship and cultural moments; viewed from afar, they coalesce into a single image, the Australia Post logo - symbolising the collective identity that holds these stories together.

In this way, the work positions art as placemaking, turning an everyday circulation space into a site of curiosity and reflection, where history, design, and national identity are held within reach.

WHY
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HONOURING THE PHILATLIC STORYTELLERS

For UnitedMake, this partnership offered a rare glimpse into the meticulous craft and cultural value of postage design, each stamp a reflection of the country’s evolving identity. The wall became a way to translate that heritage into the present: a space where art acts as placemaking, grounding a modern workplace in the stories and symbols that have long connected Australians to one another.

By celebrating the Philatelic Team’s stewardship, Held in Place transforms preservation into participation, inviting everyone who passes to rediscover the history that continues to shape the nation’s shared sense of place.

Behind every stamp lies a story, one that connects people, places, and moments in time.

Held in Place was born from a close collaboration with Australia Post’s Philatelic Team, custodians of a collection that spans more than a century of national storytelling. Under the guidance of Richard Bracken, curator of the National Philatelic Collection, the team opened their archives, sharing folders of original artworks dating back to 1937.

HOW
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DESIGN & FABRICATION

The creation of Held in Place was a deeply collaborative and technical process spanning curation, design, prototyping, and fabrication.

Working closely with the Philatelic Team, the UnitedMake studio digitised and catalogued thousands of stamps to build a comprehensive visual archive. To house this collection, a custom modular mounting system was engineered - a series of precisely fabricated holders capable of displaying stamps of varied dimensions in perfect alignment.

Designed, prototyped, and assembled in UnitedMake’s Richmond workshop, the system was installed as a continuous grid wall within the Support Centre. Every stamp was placed by hand, one at a time, creating a meticulous rhythm of colour, image, and history.

When viewed up close, it’s a museum of miniature stories; from afar, a unified emblem of national identity.

The result is both artwork and archive - a placemaking intervention that redefines the foyer as a shared cultural space, where connection, design, and storytelling remain held in place.