Lead Paint

Provenance

Camera: NIKON D7000
Lens: 14.0-24.0 mm f/2.8
Settings: 24mm · f/8.0 · 1.3s · ISO 100
Paper: Ilford Galerie Smooth Cotton Rag 310 gsm

Peeling layers of lead paint reveal faded colours on a wall inside the Terminus Hotel. The cracked surface shows the slow, deliberate decay of the abandoned building's interior.

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

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: Lead Paint
Series: Terminus Hotel
Catalogue: THO-032
Process: Giclée
Captured: 20 March 2016
Camera: NIKON D7000
Lens: 14.0-24.0 mm f/2.8
Aperture: f/8.0
Shutter: 1.3s s
ISO: 100
Focal length: 24 mm
Paper: Ilford Galerie Smooth Cotton Rag 310 gsm
Paper size: 290 × 200 mm
Location: Pyrmont, New South Wales, Australia
Authenticity: C2PA verified provenance →
Recognised by: Highly Commended in Multimedia at the 2016 National Trust of Australia (NSW) Heritage Awards

02 LOCATION

Pyrmont, New South Wales, Australia

Map · Mapbox · OpenStreetMap

03 THE STORY

About this print

A section of wall at the Terminus Hotel shows the surviving lead paint from an earlier era of the building's interior, the colour layers exposed where decades of subsequent paint have flaked away. The underlying coat is a thick pale-green oil paint, with cream above it, then white, then a final layer of the institutional dark green of the pub's working years. Each layer is visible at the edges of the flake patterns like geological strata. The wall itself is plastered brick, with the brick exposed in patches where the plaster has come away. The texture of the paint shows the brush patterns of the original application.

Lead-based paint was the standard interior coating for Sydney pubs through the first half of the twentieth century. The visible building dates from the 1917 Tooth and Co. demolition and rebuild, and its interior was painted and repainted across its working life to 1983. The earliest layers carried lead; later layers converted to water-based emulsions through the 1960s. The 33 years of vacancy between 1983 and the 2016 acquisition gave the layers time to crack and peel without being touched. The 2018 restoration involved lead-paint testing and abatement before any of the public areas were re-opened.

04 FROM THE FIELD NOTES

Lead paint curls from the corridor wall in thick, brittle sheets. Green over blue over pink over plaster. Each layer lifts and separates, edges dry and sharp enough to snap between fingers. The air in here would taste like chalk. Further down the hallway, a timber doorframe opens toward the main bar, where pale afternoon light falls through a clerestory window onto the counter.

Brett Patman

The series

Terminus Hotel

2016 · 44 photographs

The corner of Harris and John Streets, Pyrmont, has held a licensed pub almost continuously since 1841, under four names. Sydney's Harris Street electric tram opened in 1898 and terminated at the front door. The owners added a two-storey wing and renamed the pub Terminus around 1900.

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.