Bryant's butchery
Alison Bennett

2003
stitched digital colour photograph
16 x 55 cm image, 50 x 76 cm framed

Description
Composite construction, digital colour photograph depicting the interior of Bryant’s butchery, Hill End. The whitewashed room has a brick floor and is sparsely furnished with two original marble-topped benches featuring blue and white hand-painted tiles. A third table beneath a window is decorated with the name ‘H Williams’. The photograph has been constructed by joining together four digital images to create a slightly warped panoramic view of the room. Stepped top and bottom edges indicate where the joins were made.

Significance statement  
The NSW gold mining town of Hill End had a population of 8000 in 1872, but after the gold ran out the population dwindled to 211 in 1930. From 1974 painters Russell Drysdale and Donald Friend were attracted to the residue of 19th-century domestic and commercial buildings and mining infrastructure. In 1967 the town was designated a historic site and NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service began acquiring properties to restore and lease. In 2002 a partnership with the Historic Houses Trust (HHT) provided National Parks staff with conservation training and advice on property managemenT

This photograph is one of a series by photographer and Hill End resident Alison Bennett of building interiors in the Hill End area. Bennett stated:

‘For me, the fascination of Hill End lies in the overlay of contested meanings. Historians, architectural conservators, archaeologists, art historians, cultural heritage administrators and artists have all been inadvertently co-opted into a powerful oral tradition of repeating and elaborating the intangible stories associated with the site.’

As each of the three gold mining booms ended, storekeepers closed shop and moved on to new profitable fields. George Henry Bryant, the butcher, was an exception. He stayed on, consolidating his properties including Athol, a bow-windowed bungalow, which he renovated and embellished.

History
In 2003 the HHT commissioned Alison Bennett to photograph buildings at Hill End. Twelve works from the Inside Hill End series were displayed at The Mint, Sydney, in 2004. The HHT acquired three images from the exhibition.

Maker biography
Originally trained in fine art photography, Alison Bennett has worked in a range of visual arts, heritage and museum contexts. Bennett explores the experience of space and place through images of interiors. She is particularly interested in the relationship between psychological interiority and architectural interiority, the co-building between the intangible images we carry in our mind’s eye and the physical building fabric that we layer around us. Her work is a fusion of document and distortion. While her focus is on real places, the nature of her method mimics the intangible construction of significance and story associated with her complex subjects. Bennett’s solo exhibitions include Inside Hill End, exhibited at The Mint, Sydney, in 2004; Woolsheds & shearer’s quarters, a touring exhibition from Shear Outback, Hay; and In ruins at Platform2, Melbourne, 2005.

Website
www.alisonbennett.com.au

Museum number
HHT2004/2-2

Bibliography  
Mayne, Alan, Hill End: a historic Australian goldfields landscape, Melbourne University Press, Carlton, 2003
Rice, Charles, ‘Space and image, inside Hill End’, Architecture Australia, Vol 93, No 4, July/August 2004, pp40–41
Webster, Sally, ‘Conservation rescue’, Insites, No 37, Summer 2003, pp6–7