Red Walls

Provenance

Camera: NIKON D850
Lens: 24.0-70.0 mm f/2.8
Settings: 70mm · f/2.8 · 1/400 · ISO 64
Paper: Ilford Galerie Smooth Cotton Rag 310 gsm

Weathered red corrugated iron walls define a structure within Tin City. Rust patterns bleed across the panels, marking years of exposure. This abandoned settlement slowly yields to the elements.

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: Red Walls
Series: Tin City
Catalogue: TCI-030
Process: Giclée
Captured: 1 February 2018
Camera: NIKON D850
Lens: 24.0-70.0 mm f/2.8
Aperture: f/2.8
Shutter: 1/400 s
ISO: 64
Focal length: 70 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: Highly Commended in Multimedia at the 2016 National Trust of Australia (NSW) Heritage Awards

02 LOCATION

Lake Macquarie, New South Wales, Australia

Map · Mapbox · OpenStreetMap

03 THE STORY

About this print

The red walls of one of the Tin City shacks face the dune line, painted in a flat oxide red that has weathered down to a softer brick shade. The corrugated iron underneath is visible through the paint in places where the surface has worn back to bare metal. The colour runs across most of one elevation of the shack, broken only by a window and a side door. The paint has been re-applied at least once: the recent coat is brighter than the older layer underneath, which shows through at the edges of the panels. The wall meets a sand drift at its base; the dune comes part-way up the cladding.

Paint colours at Tin City are whatever each owner has on hand or can carry in. Oxide red was a common Australian shed colour through most of the twentieth century, sold cheaply in 4-litre tins and effective at slowing rust on corrugated iron. The red walls of this shack are the residue of one of those tins, carried in across the dunes and used until it was gone. The 11 remaining shacks are administered under the Worimi Conservation Lands Plan of Management 2015. Ongoing maintenance, including repainting, is allowed; rebuilding after destruction is not.

04 FROM THE FIELD NOTES

Corrugated iron panels in rust red, faded salmon, grey and bare steel form the wall of a shack half-buried in sand. A single window sits off-centre, its glass still intact. A narrow flue pipe rises from the roofline into flat overcast sky. The dune pushes up against the base of the structure, swallowing the lower sheets. No footprints in the sand. No vegetation.

Brett Patman

The series

Tin City

2018 · 37 photographs

Two tin sheds were put up on the Stockton Bight dunes in the late nineteenth century to hold provisions for sailors shipwrecked on the beach. During the Great Depression a group of squatters built a series of shacks around them. The settlement that grew became Tin City, on Worimi country, in the largest mobile coastal sand mass in the Southern Hemisphere.

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.