Gasworks are not usually associated with the arts, but as the Dunedin Gasworks Museum celebrates a 150th anniversary, many art activities are in the pipeline. Charmian Smith reports.
From an artistic point of view a gasworks is a thrilling place, says Barry Brickell, of Driving Creek Pottery in the Coromandel.
''Gasworks had wonderful architecture and brickwork, and retort houses looked like churches; they were built like churches with beautiful arched windows and gables. From a sculptural point of view they were fantastic with great big iron shapes and pipes and vessels and the excitement of firing the retort, the flames and the white-hot coke, and being quenched, the steam, the drama of it all really got me in the back of the neck and I've never lost it,'' he says.
Brickell, then, is an enthusiast. Indeed, not only was he one of the group who lobbied to save the buildings when the Dunedin gasworks closed in the late 1980s, his exhibition of ceramics, ''Barry Brickell: A hot retort,'' opens at the Brett McDowell gallery on October 4 in conjunction with the Dunedin Gasworks Museum 150th celebrations.
He is also speaking at the Industrial Heritage Symposium at the museum next week.
Growing up in Devonport, Auckland, in the late 1930s and '40s, he was fascinated by fire, much to his parents' horror.
''I got a hiding from my father for lighting a fire under our old wooden villa where I didn't think he could see me, but I was being very very very careful. After that Mum gave me a patch out in the garden where I could play with fire and build kilns and make furnaces. I was copying what the gasworks were doing with their retort furnaces,'' he says.
While his schoolmates were kicking balls around, the young Brickell, who hated sports, spent his time at the Devonport gasworks, a 10-minute bike ride away and later got jobs there during the university holidays. When he had melted almost everything in his backyard kilns, his father suggested he make some use of his passion for fire, so he decided to become a potter and Auckland ceramicist Len Castle became his mentor, he says.
He built kilns for other potters around the country and made a point of visiting gasworks wherever he went.
''I just loved the places. They stank, they had smells and steam and smoke and flames and architecture and sculptural ironwork and all sorts of things. I've never lost my enthusiasm for gasworks.''
He was especially fascinated by the retort houses which he describes as ''hellfire and damnation places''. Few others of his generation shared his enthusiasm and during the 1970s and '80s all the gasworks were closed, Dunedin's being one of the last, in 1987. Realising they were on the way out, he did sketches and took photographs and now has a substantial collection of gasworks images, he says.
''They were regarded as a dirty, filthy industry. Society couldn't get rid of gasworks quick enough.''
The Dunedin retort house was taken down but the engine house, boiler house and fitting and blacksmiths' shops have been retained and now form the basis of the Gasworks Museum.
For his exhibition, he has made terracotta relief tiles depicting various aspects of the Dunedin and Oamaru gasworks, a sculpture of the ultimate retort house, and a live terracotta retort.
''It will actually glow inside and you'll be able to put pieces of coal or wood in and it will make gas and watch a puff of smoke come out - all of this going on in an art gallery,'' he says.
''Gaslight Gala,'' a spectacular show incorporating fire-eating and juggling, live music, dancing, steampunk characters, a costume parade and live theatre, is planned for the Gasworks Museum's 150th celebration on October 5.
One of the highlights is a piece of verbatim theatre, Gasmen, produced by Talking House, exploring the stories of four of the men who used to work at the gasworks.
''The thing I love about verbatim, and especially this one, is it makes the ordinary extraordinary. It records the usual, the unsung, the everyday,'' says Karen Elliot who is directing the show.
Verbatim or documentary theatre involves listening to people's stories, editing them slightly so they flow better, then having an actor retell them, with the help of an MP3 player, in the original words, complete with ums, ahs and gestures. It's like oral history, but performed, she says.
She and Danny Still, the actor who will retell the stories, interviewed four former employees: Bob Bradshaw, Wayne Allen, John Beckett and Willis Bagley, each of whom worked in a different part of the gasworks.
''We found [their stories] incredibly engaging - unexpectedly engaging, and I think that's what verbatim theatre does because you enter into it seriously and these stories would never otherwise be heard,'' Elliot said.
Some of the stories were unexpected, like putting down and cremating unwanted cats and dogs for people.
Or the warmth of the buildings that attracted former employees back for cups of tea, and homeless people to sleep on the walkways in the retort house at night.
It was the warmest place in Dunedin in winter, according to Bob Bradshaw, one of the former employees whose stories will be told.
''There was one guy who was a regular and he'd always go to the shift foreman's hut and knock on the door and ask if he could come in. He was very polite. You'd ask him in and he'd sit down and have a cup of tea with you and if you had extra sandwiches in your tuckerbag you'd give him something to eat, and he'd go up to the retort house and go to sleep. He was gone by seven o'clock the next morning. It was so warm you could just lie on the grating and go to sleep with nothing over you, no blanket. We used to give them wheat bags to lie on,'' he said.
The stories go from the mundane to the anecdotal to the moving - it's an honouring of the people who provided the ordinary things that people in Dunedin needed, Elliot said.
''All of them said it was a great job. It was dirty and at times inconvenient and at times it was dangerous, but there was an incredible community here. Sure they got up to a lot of highjinks and we've taken about half of those stories out of the show - some wouldn't do them or the gasworks any good.
''We've kept a balance of the work and the play on the job. There are some very funny stories and some that had us shrieking when they were telling us, but it's a fascinating piece of recent history.''
If Gasmen is successful, the Southern Heritage Trust plans to do more verbatim theatre in conjunction with other heritage sites as it is a good way to bring history to life and make it more accessible to people, according to Jonathan Cweorth, trust member and artistic director of the gala.
See it
• Grand Gaslight Gala: Celebrating 150 years of light in Dunedin is at Dunedin Gasworks Museum, 20 Braemar St, South Dunedin on October 5 at 7.30pm. Tickets ($48/$43) are available from etickets.excellentevents.co.nz, The Cuckoo's Nest (upstairs, 324 George St), Brett McDowell Gallery (5 Dowling St), and Dunedin Gasworks Museum (20 Braemar St, Sundays noon-4pm).
• ''Barry Brickell - A hot retort'' opens at the Brett McDowell Gallery, 5 Dowling St from 4th-24th October. Heritage Impact 150, an industrial heritage symposium is at the Dunedin Gasworks Museum from October 3 to 5. Keynote speaker is Sir Neil Cossons from the UK and special guest is Barry Brickell of Driving Creek Pottery.
• For more information visit www.gasworks150.org.nz
