Monthly Archive for March, 2010

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Her Majesty’s Theatre

Published by Kathy Hackett on March 21, 2010 3 Comments Tags: , , .

Mr George Rignold, lessee and manager of Her Majesty’s Theatre, Sydney, has… demonstrated that in Australia the ballet, burlesque, and the limelight have by no means succeeded in banishing ‘old Bill’ from the boards…In point of fact, more than half of Shakespeare’s plays have been produced under Mr Rignold’s auspices in Australia – a fact that testifies strongly in favour of the culture of Colonial audiences.
J.F. Hogan, The Sister Dominions, London, Ward and Downey, 1896, pp.143-145.

Her Majesty’s Theatre was located on the north-east corner of Pitt and Market Streets, Sydney. This photograph can be dated by the sign above the door of the theatre, advertising the 1889 Rignold production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

The theatre was built in the late 1880s, was damaged by fire in 1902 and closed in 1933.

Photography by Kerry & Co, Tyrrell Collection.
No known copyright restrictions.

Geomungo player

Published by Iwona Hetherington on March 20, 2010 0 Comments Tags: , , .

This photograph was taken in 2004 in the Powerhouse Museum’s Turbine Hall during the performance presented by a group of dancers from South Korea.

The musician captured in this shot is playing a traditional Korean stringed instrument called geomungo. He is plucking the strings with a short bamboo stick held in his right hand. The performer is wearing a traditional men’s robe and a wide brimmed black hat. This type of hat is called gat in Korea and is usually made of horse hair.

Photography by Sotha Bourn
© All rights reserved

The Hotel Metropole

Published by Kathy Hackett on March 19, 2010 1 Comment Tags: , , .

No more magnificent structure of design or appointment of its type can be found in the colonies, and certainly not in Sydney, than the Hotel Metropole.
Sydney Morning Herald, January 14, 1890.

The Hotel Metropole, with frontages on Young, Bent and Phillip streets, was built by the Australian Coffee Palace Company at a cost of 150,000 pounds and opened on the 14th of January, 1890. At the opening ceremony, Mr McBean, chairman of the company, declared it ‘a splendid establishment’ and Mayor Burdekin described the architecture, by Hennessy and Sheerin, as magnificent.

Along with mosaic tiled floors in the entrance areas and lavish stained glass windows, the building boasted a roof promenade from which, according to the SMH, guests could take in views from the Heads almost to Parramatta. There were 260 guest rooms, several dining rooms, sumptuous furnishings and electric lighting. This photograph, by Kerry & Co, shows that the hotel was conveniently located next to a city tram route.

The Metropole could accommodate more than 300 guests, and its registers recorded some well-known international visitors. Rudyard Kipling spent two nights there during his 1891 trip to Australia. Jack London also stayed there in 1917, later describing the hotel as ‘managed by Barbarians’ because of the night staff’s refusal to provide him with an extra candle by which to write when the light bulb in his room failed.

The Hotel Metropole closed in 1969 and was demolished soon afterwards.

Photography by Kerry & Co
No known copyright restrictions

Sluice mining: washing the hills away

Published by Paula Bray on March 18, 2010 1 Comment Tags: , , , .

Sluicing was a form of mining that used high pressure jets of water to break up loose alluvial hillsides. After the soil of a hillside was turned into a slurry with water, it was channelled down the hill into sluice boxes, where minerals were caught on ‘riffles’ in the boxes.

Sluice mining was used in NSW to find gold at Kiandra and Adelong, and tin at Tingha and Watson’s Creek. It had a considerable environmental impact, including soil erosion, diversion of water courses and destruction of local vegetation and biodiversity.

Photography by Charles Kerry Studio
No known copyright restrictions
Post by Sandra McEwen, Principal Curator

St Patrick’s, Church Hill

Published by Kathy Hackett on March 17, 2010 0 Comments Tags: , .

The Gothic style sandstone church of St Patrick’s was designed by J.F. Hilly and built in the 1840s on land donated by William Davis, a convict, who took part in the Irish Rebellion in 1798. Located in Grosvenor Street, St Patrick’s opened in 1844 and was the second Catholic church built in Sydney. The church became an important centre for the Irish Catholic community, many of whose children were educated at the neighbouring St Patrick’s school.

The gas lamps in the photograph indicate that it was taken sometime before electrical illumination was introduced to Sydney’s streets in 1904.

St Patrick is the patron saint of Ireland and, according to legend, used a shamrock for preaching, hence the green that is worn by many on March 17. Legend also has it that St Patrick drove the snakes out of Ireland.

Photography by Kerry & Co, Tyrrell Collection
No known copyright restrictions

Modern Times: Flickr group highlight

Published by Paula Bray on March 16, 2010 0 Comments Tags: , , , .


VI, originally uploaded by dexodexo.

This wonderful, black and white architectural image has been taken by one of the members participating in our Modern Times group on Flickr.  This sparse yet graphic image highlights a section of the Macquarie bank building located in King Street on the foreshore.  You can see the detail of this shot through the larger file that the photographer has posted to ‘all sizes’ on Flickr

This building has been described by the Sydney Morning Herald as “Australia’s first inside out building” with the designer of the King Street building, James Fitzpatrick, describing the architectural exterior as “ Everything on the building is there because it is doing something”.

It is interesting to note, from this article, that the developer had planned to use an imitation of Max Dupain’s famous Sunbaker image to decorate the façade, which didn’t eventuate.

Photography by dexodexo
© All rights reserved

Woman feeding the chickens

Published by Kathy Hackett on March 15, 2010 0 Comments

In last Thursday’s Photo of the Day post, curator Margaret Simpson wrote about the widespread practice of keeping chickens for domestic use in late nineteenth century Australia:

By the end of the nineteenth century most people in Australia kept a few fowls for home use. Chickens needed a chicken coop or house in which to lay and sit on their eggs, where they were shut up at night, safe from predators, such as foxes. The chickens fed on kitchen scraps and spare grains, and any seeds, insects or morsels they could find in the yard.

This photograph, from an unattributed studio, shows a woman in what appears to be a suburban backyard feeding her fowls from a kitchen saucepan. The wire coop that kept the chickens safe from nighttime predators is clearly visible. The birds, however, were a little too fast for the camera’s shutter as can be seen from the blur created by their fluttering wings.

Photography by unattributed studio. Tyrrell Collection
No known copyright restrictions

Acrobatics

Published by Iwona Hetherington on March 14, 2010 0 Comments Tags: , , .

This photograph was taken by the Museum’s photographer Marinco Kojdanovski back in 2006. It shows an acrobat from the The Flying Fruit Fly Circus. The group was performing at the Museum in January 2006 at the opening of The Great Wall of China: dynasties, dragons and warriors exhibition and the associated holiday program. “Teetering on the Wall” was a show developed especially for the exhibition, with many of its acts drawing on the ancient Chinese circus tradition.

Photography by Marinco Kojdanovski
© All rights reserved

Bruno’s Roman Holiday

Published by Paula Bray on March 13, 2010 0 Comments

In this fashion photograph Italian model Carla Baldaracchi wears a bold Post-WWII modernist summer frock by Ninette of Melbourne. (Perhaps the man on the left was the photographer’s scout – the person who managed to secure the location for the shot?) The photograph presents an ambitious scenario, capturing both the fashion, and the orchestra pit and the elaborate operatic stage set of the Baths of Caracalla, ancient Roman ruins of the lavish thermal baths built for Emperor Caracalla between AD 212 and 217 which were used for outdoor operatic performances during Spring and Summer. Here Melbourne-based Australian photographer Bruno Benini (born 1925, migrated to Australia from the medieval city of Massa Marittima in Tuscany, Italy in 1935, died Melbourne 2001) places Australian fashion centre stage! It’s a remarkable shot as it not only evokes the globetrotting or ‘vacation’ style that became popular in fashion photography during the 1950s, but also captures the photographer’s Italian heritage and his interest in history and opera. Furthermore, it hints at the cinematic influence of fashionable films like Funny Face (1957) and Roman Holiday (1953).

Interestingly, Benini’s maternal grandfather was an Etruscan archaeologist. Perhaps he left a binding youthful impression on Benini as a boy, as many of the negatives in the Benini photography archive show Australian fashion shot against ancient settings. This particular shot was taken during Benini’s ‘round the world’ trip in 1958 when he travelled to New York and London, visiting family in Italy and shooting photographs of Australian fashion in and around Rome on both Italian and Australian models.

The Benini archive was acquired by the Powerhouse Museum with funding assistance from the Australian Government through the National Cultural Heritage Account in 2009. A Benini exhibition is currently being developed for the 2010 Sydney Design Festival. Keep an eye on the Curatorial blog as curators reveal more treasures from the Benini archive.

Photography by Bruno Benini
© Estate of Bruno Benini
Post by Anne-Marie Van de Ven, Curator

Water Colour Section, No. 1, National Art Gallery, Sydney, N.S.W.

Published by Kathy Hackett on March 12, 2010 0 Comments

New South Wales has one of the best water-colour collections in the world…[I]t represents most of the water-colour painters of the more modern British School…The two eastern colonies have committees of selection in London, and it is through these bodies the colonies have secured some of the most famous pictures which adorn their galleries…In the Sydney gallery…there are works from the French, the Belgian, the German, the Italian, the Spanish, the Austrian, the Bavarian and the Swedish schools…A bullock team on the Darling Downs is as worthy a thing to paint as an English wheatfield; Govett’s Leap lends itself to stately power as much as the Highlands of Scotland; and there are tints in the skies of the South, and colours on the shores of Australian seas, as full of beauty as any that ever rose before the eye of a master.

Gilbert Parker, Round the Compass in Australia, Hutchinson, London, 1892, pp.429-31, 437

Early in the twentieth Henry King was commissioned by the Art Gallery of New South Wales, (then known as the National Art Gallery of New South Wales) to photograph its major works. The Powerhouse Museum Tyrrell Collection includes 1,334 photographs by Henry King.

Photography by Henry King. Tyrrell Collection
No known copyright restrictions