Return to the Overlooked

Now Sydney-based, New Zealand photographer Rebecca Wiig, 27, has documented the city’s RSL clubs for an exhibition of 26 photographs called ‘If These Walls Could Talk’ held at Darlinghurst’s Tap Gallery. She began shooting in the clubs shortly after Anzac Day last year. By February she had visited 106 clubs across the state, though she didn’t capture them all. “I was using film, so it was pretty expensive. I selected them on their aesthetic appeal. I love grungy and kitsch stuff,” Wiig says. “There are 300 RSLs in NSW alone,” Wiig says. “The RSL is one of Australia’s national treasures — one that is often overlooked and sadly under threat due to contemporary competition. I thought I should document it … We do have the RSA [the Royal New Zealand Returned and Services Association], but you’d be lucky to get one RSA club in a city. And they’re really only for old diggers, not the younger generations who go to RSLs here.”