Irene was born in Australia — then she had to prove she belonged

At Steven Law's home in Northcote, Melbourne, family albums are strewn across the dining room table, offering glimpses into a past that was rarely discussed.

A large sepia photograph catches Steven's eye and he lifts a magnifying glass to look more closely.

It features a woman — Steven's grandmother Irene Law — wearing a large hat and a scarf draped around her shoulders. It is just the way Steven remembers her.

"Irene was an elegant woman; she was well spoken, well dressed. That was how we knew her," Steven told SBS Chinese.

Decades after her death, her image has appeared on walls across Australia, as part of artist Peter Drew’s Aussie poster series — bringing a little-known chapter of her life into view and raising questions about who gets to be called Australian.

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When Steven's sister Christina Law discovered that her grandmother would feature in Drew's poster collection, she was moved to tears.

"I was really overwhelmed and quite teary when I saw that nanna had been included in this series," Christina told SBS Chinese.

The posters feature archival photographs, sourced from the National Archives of Australia (NAA) of people who applied for certificates exempting them from the dictation test .

Under the Immigration Restriction Act 1901, one of the laws that formed part of what is now known as the White Australia policy, the dictation test could be administered at an officer's discretion to people seeking entry to Australia.

It required a person to write a 50-word passage in a European language dictated by an immigration officer. After 1905, the officer could choose "any prescribed language", making it possible to administer the test in a language the person did not understand.

People who failed were declared a "prohibited immigrant" and refused entry or , in some circumstances, deported .

The exemption certificates were designed to allow eligible non-European residents who had lived in Australia to leave temporarily and return within a set timeframe without being subjected to the dictation test.

It's been more than a decade since Drew debuted the poster series in 2016.