Help

Provenance

Camera
NIKON D850
Lens
14.0-24.0 mm f/2.8
Settings
14mm · f/8.0 · 2s · ISO 800
Paper
Ilford Galerie Smooth Cotton Rag 310 gsm

The word "Help" written across a deteriorating interior wall. Paint peeling in sheets from the surface beneath. Grimy, discoloured plaster. Abandoned ward interior with no furnishings visible. Low ambient light across the damaged wall surface.

Edition
Open edition

Open edition
Printed to order, no fixed quantity. Each print is hand-signed by the photographer.

Limited edition
A fixed number of prints exist. Once sold, the edition closes permanently. Each print is individually numbered and signed.

$100.00 AUD
Size
Type
Colour
Signed, numbered, with COA. Made to order in 5 to 10 business days (unframed). Shipped in protective packaging with edition certificate, paper-stock reference and a printed care guide.
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In situ

Help at Female Ward 9 & 10, unframed print displayed in situ on a wall.Help at Female Ward 9 & 10, white-framed print displayed in situ on a wall.Help at Female Ward 9 & 10, black-framed print displayed in situ on a wall.Help at Female Ward 9 & 10, raw timber-framed print displayed in situ on a wall.Help at Female Ward 9 & 10, glass print displayed in situ on a wall.
01 PROVENANCE

Print datasheet

Title
Help
Series
Callan Park
Catalogue
CPA-014
Process
Giclée
Captured
1 March 2019
Camera
NIKON D850
Lens
14.0-24.0 mm f/2.8
Aperture
f/8.0
Shutter
2s s
ISO
800
Focal length
14 mm
Paper
Ilford Galerie Smooth Cotton Rag 310 gsm
Paper size
290 × 200 mm
Location
Rozelle, New South Wales, Australia
Recognised by
Highly Commended in Multimedia at the 2016 National Trust of Australia (NSW) Heritage Awards
02 LOCATION

Rozelle, New South Wales, Australia

Map · Mapbox · OpenStreetMap

03 THE STORY

About this print

The word is impossible to walk past. Scrawled across the peeling wall of Female Ward 9 and 10 inside the Kirkbride Complex at Callan Park, it says everything the building's official history does not. The Kirkbride Complex was designed in the 1870s by Colonial Architect James Barnet in collaboration with Inspector General of the Insane Frederic Norton Manning and Charles Moore, Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens. Ground was broken on 11 February 1880, the first stone laid on 22 April that year. By 1 July 1884, the first ward was open with approximately 50 male patients. The first female patients arrived on 19 December 1884, transferred from Gladesville. The completed buildings, finished at a total cost of £235,539, were designed to hold 766 patients across 17 sandstone freestone blocks arranged in a square, totalling 10 acres. The design was built on the principles of moral therapy, a belief that the environment itself could be a treatment. Light, air, pavilion layouts, landscaped courtyards, views to the Parramatta River and the Blue Mountains. The NSW State Heritage Register describes it as the first hospital in Australia designed as a curative and therapeutic environment. By 1930, it held 1,500 patients against that designed capacity. Public inquiries followed in 1923, 1948, and 1955. A Royal Commission sat in 1961. The hospital's clinical functions wound down through the 1980s and 1990s. The last patient services transferred from the Kirkbride Complex in 1994. Callan Park Hospital closed permanently on 30 April 2008. What the photograph records is the wall as it stood in 2019, not long after Sydney College of the Arts vacated the complex at the end of that year. Peeling paint. Grimy surfaces. A word in the middle of it all. Whoever wrote it, and whenever they wrote it, the building has kept it.

04 FROM THE FIELD NOTES

Inside Female Ward 9 and 10 of the Kirkbride Complex, a single word covers the wall: Help. The paint is peeling back in layers, the surface beneath stained and grimy. This is one of ten ward blocks that made up Callan Park Hospital for the Insane when the first stone was laid on 22 April 1880. Designed as a curative environment built on the principles of moral therapy, it held 1,500 patients by 1930 against a designed capacity of around 766. The ward closed with the hospital on 30 April 2008.

Brett Patman

Callan Park

The series

Callan Park

2016–2018 · 93 photographs

Dr Frederic Norton Manning rejected the asylum as 'a cemetery for deceased intellects'. In 1876 he toured asylums in England, France, Germany and the United States, returning with drawings of Chartham Down Hospital in Kent. Working with Colonial Architect James Barnet and Botanic Gardens director Charles Moore, he built Australia's first hospital purpose-built for moral therapy treatment on the Iron Cove foreshore.

View all in this series →

05 SIZE GUIDE

Print sizes

The anatomy view shows what this finish is as a physical object: paper margin, mat band, frame depth, acrylic profile. The comparison strip shows how each size sits relative to the others at true scale. Click a size or a finish to update both.

Anatomy · true ratio
TypeSizeWidthHeight
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