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01 Wangi Power StationWangi Wangi2015
ISO 1001/5f/8.024mm
Series · 51 prints
Map · Mapbox · OpenStreetMap
About a thousand men built Wangi Power Station, on the western shore of Lake Macquarie. They were Hunter Valley locals and post-war Italian migrants, many living in a tent city on the lakeshore through the build. By 1957 they'd put up the main building, 228 metres long and eleven storeys high in triple-brick over a riveted steel frame, with three 76-metre concrete chimneys behind it.
Wangi was one of the few power stations in Australia that was designed to be looked at. Industrial buildings in 1948 weren't expected to be designed at all, but Colin Smith of C.H. Smith & Johnson took it through Elcom as project architect with architectural appearance treated as a parameter alongside engineering and economics. It was the last Australian power station built in the English brick-massing tradition before steel-skeleton plants took over.
On 10 June 1964 the NSW grid went dark. A Station's stoker-fired boilers had kept their fires alight through the shutdown, and Wangi played a major role in bringing the state back online.
The generating equipment was stripped between 1995 and 1997. The empty turbine hall, the brick exterior, and the three chimneys remain. Heritage NSW listed the complex on the State Heritage Register in 1999.
Cited as a reference in the Heritage NSW SHR 01014 record, NSW SHR 01014, Hunter Living Histories (UoN) and Lake Macquarie City Council
Hand-signed limited editions, printed from the original RAW file. Editions run from 100 down to 25 and are not reissued once they sell through.
NSW State Heritage Register · Listing 01014 · Statement of Significance, 1999
Made to order by Brett in Sydney, from the original RAW file. Each print is hand-signed and numbered before it ships.
Paper
Ilford Galerie cotton rag, 310 gsm. Acrylic on metallic gloss, 260 gsm.
Lead time
Unframed: 5 to 10 business days. Framed and acrylic: 10 to 20.
Eleven storeys of brick on the western shore of Lake Macquarie, built by 1,000 men and run for nearly thirty years. A record of how Wangi Power Station was made, what it made, and what is left.
Read the noteThere was this influx of workers and families and families of the workers and brothers and moms and dads and everyone was just chiming in and saying, 'Oh, look. I used to work in that room. I used to work in that workshop. Do you remember Bob who ran the store? God, he was hard to deal with,'
CNN Travel
On Wangi specifically.
One day I stopped at a vast abandoned factory I passed on my way home from work. There was a long section of fence missing. I wandered in, camera in hand, and that moment was the unofficial beginning of Lost Collective.
The Guardian
On the LC archive.
Leaving a secure job to work as an artist, trying to manage inconsistent income and tempering the self-doubt and self-criticism that came with it has been one of the most difficult things I've done.
The Guardian
On the LC archive.
