Friday, April 25, 2014

sunflowers in the desolate industial demolition

Site of a former Commonwealth Wool Store in Kensington - transformed by planting sunflowers - on the rubble of a demolition site, with lots of brick and other artefacts strewn among the rows.



Surface artefacts from demolition sites are often distributed by ploughing. This example is unique in an inner city industrial context. Another example that comes to mind is  laser-leveled farm near Shepparton, which had a thin scatter of ceramics, glass and building material over a large area but no obvious source of the material. It came to pass (following discussions with locals) that the farm house and yards had been demolished then the topsoil over the entire area, including whatever was scattered around the old homestead site, was scraped up and stockpiled. The paddocks were then laser leveled, and the topsoil re-spread across the new surfaces.

Other plough redistribution can be more regular, such as the old Wahring Hotel near Murchison, where the rubbish heaps of the demolished hotel (located in the corner of a cropping paddock) were gradually eaten into by ploughing and dragged around the paddock perimeter. the farmer seems to have always ploughed in the same direction so the 'p;ume' of glass and ceramic could be traced back to its source.



Gibbons & Masters Patent Brick