Off Form Off Modern

A Brutalist Archaeology | Towards The Grampians

This exhibition provokes an alternative reading of a number of Graeme Gunn’s architectural projects, paired with artworks by Fred Williams, Philip Hunter, Chevalier, 3D digitial scanning analyses of the Grampians, abstracted and large-format physical models and original photography, ephemera and film content.

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^{Timber Block Samples collected around Henty Road, Hamilton | Murray Gunn (Photography : Mitchell Ransome)}

When discussing Graeme Gunn, critics and theorists of his most notable buildings (The Plumbers and Gasfitters Union, Richardson House, Baronda and Molesworth Street Townhouses to name a few) often describe them as Brutalist.

There is no question that his projects fit with architectural historian, Reyner Banham’s ‘image’ of “The New Brutalism” as he described it in his 1955 article for Architectural Review. However, the Smithsons who first used the term in 1953 and Banham would begin to hold very different opinions about the direction of the New Brutalist project. Banham’s ‘Brutalist image’ becomes an unhelpful label for Gunn and we discover through a series of interviews with him that his interests are more aligned with the Smithsons and those of the radical collaborative, ‘The Independent Group’ - in the material qualities of architecture and the aspects of process and making in architectural construction as well as in “New Brutalism” as a ‘way of life’.

^{Plumbers and Gasfitters Union Building | Model by Michael Park (Photography : Mitchell Ransome)}

Through these interviews we have been able to retrace the formation of Gunn’s practice in those formative years, the influence of landscape designer Ellis Stones and the impact of growing up at the foot of the Grampian Ranges in the Western District of Victoria where the landscape is embedded with personal meaning. In describing the Plumbers and Gasfitters Union for example we learn that there is no direct link between the sculptural form of the building and the emergence of “New Brutalism” in Great Britain. Instead, Gunn’s references are geological where he asks us to reconsider the building as part of an ensemble of geological references - an “escarpment”, “sheer face” and volcanic “cascade”. In other words, he is an architect working from a geologically informed perspective and his response to the geology of the remarkable landscape of the Western District of Victoria emerges with a singular clarity in his Plumbers and Gasfitters Union building.

This exhibition does not seek to prove that the ‘Brutalist’ label and previous interpretations of Gunn’s architecture is wrong - rather the exhibition describes a multi-layeredness in his work and an originality born out of a particular place, a specific landscape and a geological eye. For Gunn architecture becomes a mediation on, through and with the landscape – like the great landscape painters he believes that architecture’s role is in revealing landscape.

Graeme Gunn grew up in Hamilton at the foot of the Grampians. Their dark blue silhouette has anchored his life to the district and childhood memories of camping, hiking and walking their trails have played a central role in his way of life and in his reading of place. He has long been aware of the imposing sandstone-quartzite formation that rises from the flat Wimmera Plains north-west of the Grampians (Gariwerd). Known as Dyuritte to its Traditional Owners, the Wotjobaluk, Jaadwa, Jadawadjali, Wergaia and Jupagulk peoples, it was named Mount Arapiles by the explorer Major Thomas Mitchell in 1836.

^{Merchant Builders Interior Photography by Kurt Veld - printed on linen | (Photography : Mitchell Ransome)}

Like Chevalier and Von Guérard, Gunn discovered these spectacular geological forms and in fact references the cliffs of Mount Sturgeon and Bluff Major, with its dramatic undercut pinnacles and cascades when explaining the Plumbers and Gasfitters Union (PGU) building’s sculptural form – commonly referred to as “Brutalist”. Gunn suggests that he was searching for an image of permanence, resilience, strength, stability and for a malleable material that would best represent an organization like the Union. Gunn suggests that standing underneath the projecting window of PGU (“lookout”) facing the “cascade” was akin to standing under these escarpments or undercut pinnacles in Mount Arapiles while the projecting staircase (“fragment”) to the street was also to be read as part of the ensemble of geological references. These were ideas borne out of the many conversations he and landscape designer Ellis Stones would have about rock formations and the basalt landforms of the Western District. In gardens Ellis Stones would typically arrange for lumps of granite to be partially sunk into the earth as if they had always been there and the PGU similarly appears embedded: the “cascade” literally signals a rock formation erupting from the topography of the city. It is a footing that firmly embeds the building in the land and a site absent of any singular natural feature where the architecture ends up generating its own landscape.

^{LIDAR Digital Scanning of Mount Abrupt | by Tony Yu and Melissa Iraheta  (Photography : Mitchell Ransome)}

This exhibition, designed and produced by Alan Pert, Philip Goad, Dani Mileo and Theo Blankley for Hamilton Gallery is supported by The Jock Simmie Architectural History, Urban and Cultural Heritage Research Fund. Its generosity furthers knowledge and access to architectural history, conservation and heritage.