Hiding Spot

Provenance

Camera: NIKON D810
Lens: 14.0-24.0 mm f/2.8
Settings: 14mm · f/8.0 · 1.6s · ISO 100
Paper: Ilford Galerie Smooth Cotton Rag 310 gsm

A worn office chair tucked into a corner at the top of the 'A' Briquette Factory at Morwell Power Station and Briquette Factories, beside wall-mounted electrical boxes and a panel marked 'THE 2', lit purple and blue from below. A plant was the factory that kept running after a 2003 fire shut the B, C and D plants, on paired 12 hour crews until the 2014 closure.

Edition

Open edition

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

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Colour

Signed, numbered, with COA. Made to order in 10 to 20 business days (framed). Shipped in protective packaging with edition certificate, paper-stock reference and a printed care guide.

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In situ

01 PROVENANCE

Print datasheet

Title: Hiding Spot
Series: Morwell Power Station
Catalogue: MPS-015
Process: Giclée
Captured: 30 March 2017
Camera: NIKON D810
Lens: 14.0-24.0 mm f/2.8
Aperture: f/8.0
Shutter: 1.6s s
ISO: 100
Focal length: 14 mm
Paper: Ilford Galerie Smooth Cotton Rag 310 gsm
Paper size: 290 × 200 mm
Location: Morwell, Victoria, Australia
Authenticity: C2PA verified provenance →
Recognised by: Highly Commended in Multimedia at the 2016 National Trust of Australia (NSW) Heritage Awards

02 LOCATION

Morwell, Victoria, Australia

Map · Mapbox · OpenStreetMap

03 THE STORY

About this print

A worn office chair with a splayed metal base occupies a corner at the top of the 'A' Briquette Factory at Morwell Power Station and Briquette Factories. It sits close to the wall-mounted electrical boxes and a control panel marked 'THE 2', positioned to suggest the spot was chosen with some purpose in mind. A red barrel and blue bucket sit nearby on metal grate flooring, the whole corner washed in a purple and blue glow from an unseen light source below. Broken window panes let in a strip of daylight behind, competing with the artificial colour across the grimy brick.

This corner sits at the top of the A briquette factory, the factory that kept running after the others stopped. A Boxing Day fire in 2003 destroyed the coal cross-over conveyor feeding the B, C and D briquette plants, and only A plant continued, the complex then running at a fraction of its intended capacity. The factory was worked on paired 12 hour crews, with floor wash-downs at shift change-over. The briquetting presses were supplied by Maschinenfabrik Buckau R. Wolf A.G. of Germany under the 1950 contract. The final briquette feed came in August 2014, when Energy Brix Australia closed the complex and about 75 direct jobs were lost. Brett photographed this corner on 30 March 2017, in the closed briquette factory before the demolition program began.

04 FROM THE FIELD NOTES

A steel mesh grating floor stretches across a maintenance platform inside the power station. An office chair sits collapsed under a pile of heavy tarpaulin and debris, its swivel base still intact. Paint buckets and a Mobil drum crowd the corner. Orange conduit runs along a grey brick wall marked "6-7-FB." Electrical panels hang open. Light floods through a broken window, catching dust and cobweb in a wash of cool blue.

Brett Patman

The series

Morwell Power Station

1949-2014 · 79 photographs

The State Electricity Commission of Victoria built Morwell as the centrepiece of its postwar plan to sever Victoria's reliance on black coal from New South Wales. Construction ran from 1949 to 1959; electricity production commenced in December 1958 and the first commercial briquettes followed in December 1959. With the demolition of Old Yallourn between 1995 and 1999, Morwell became the earliest surviving large-scale Victorian state-grid power station, registered on the Victorian Heritage Register as H2377 on 1 March 2018.

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.