Patchwork

Provenance

Camera: NIKON D850
Lens: 70.0-200.0 mm f/2.8
Settings: 200mm · f/8.0 · 1/200 · ISO 200
Paper: Ilford Galerie Smooth Cotton Rag 310 gsm

Corrugated iron panels, weathered by salt and sand, form a patchwork wall on a shack in Tin City. The faded colours reflect years of exposure to the elements on Stockton Beach.

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: Patchwork
Series: Tin City
Catalogue: TCI-012
Process: Giclée
Captured: 31 January 2018
Camera: NIKON D850
Lens: 70.0-200.0 mm f/2.8
Aperture: f/8.0
Shutter: 1/200 s
ISO: 200
Focal length: 200 mm
Paper: Ilford Galerie Smooth Cotton Rag 310 gsm
Paper size: 290 × 200 mm
Location: Lake Macquarie, New South Wales, Australia
Authenticity: C2PA verified provenance →
Recognised by: National Trust of Australia (NSW), 2016 Heritage Award, Multimedia

02 LOCATION

Lake Macquarie, New South Wales, Australia

Map · Mapbox · OpenStreetMap

03 THE STORY

About this print

A patchwork wall on one of the Tin City shacks shows the settlement's construction logic in a single frame. The wall is built up from materials that didn't start out as wall: a panel of corrugated iron in galvanised grey, a section of painted weatherboard, a piece of red Colorbond, a square of plywood with the original stencilled brand visible, and a strip of marine ply at the top. Each piece has been screwed or nailed onto the timber frame underneath, with overlaps taped against the weather. The seams between pieces are visible as dark lines. The proportions of the materials don't match. None of them line up.

Tin City shacks were built without delivered materials. Everything that went into them came in by hand or by ute over the dunes, picked up second-hand or salvaged from the beach. Walls were assembled from whatever cladding the builder could find and afford that month. Repairs followed the same logic: when a panel rusted out or got blown loose, it was replaced with the next piece available. The patchwork is not deliberate aesthetic. It is the visible record of forty or fifty years of small repair decisions made by one family on one wall. The wall in this photograph is still doing its job.

04 FROM THE FIELD NOTES

Green and rust-brown corrugated iron panels sit side by side across a long, low structure. Newer colorbond sheeting bolts onto older oxidised walls. A green poly water tank perches on the roof. Ducting, flue pipes and a whirlybird ventilator break the roofline. Sand drifts up against the base of the building, burying the lower edges. The sky is flat and pale. Sparse ground cover clings to the sand in the foreground.

Brett Patman

The series

Tin City

2018 · 36 photographs

Tin City sits in the Stockton Bight sand dunes, about eleven kilometres south-west of Anna Bay in NSW. Eleven shacks remain. Habitation dates from the 1930s Great Depression, when men out of work moved into provision sheds left from late-nineteenth-century shipwreck-watch use.

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.