WOOLSHEDS

The Australian woolshed is quintessential Australian architecture, steeped in our history and folklore. Blown by ferocious seasonal winds, bleached bare by hot summer sun, survivors of flood, pests and fire, these buildings are synonymous with the harshness of the surrounding landscape and a testament to farmers’ ingenuity, courage and resourcefulness.
Tom Roberts and Henry Lawson rank amongst the countless artists, writers and poets who have eulogised these cavernous spaces. Once hothouses of discontent and rivalry between shearers and those who employed them, sheds are regarded as the birthplace of Australian unionism and, indirectly, the Australian Labor Party.
But recent years have seen times a’changing. The national flock has more than halved from its high of 180 million and this, combined with new health and safety regulations, are closing many sheds. They are fast becoming a silent symbol of our past.
One of Australia’s finest photographers, Andrew Chapman, has embarked on a passionately ambitious project to record woolsheds in every state, capturing the grand as well as the everyday. This is an invaluable historical record of an Australian icon at the end of an era.

ABOUT ANDREW CHAPMAN

Andrew Chapman has always had a love of the old. He has a deep respect for Australian history, culture and architecture, and this shows in his body of work which primarily features evocative images from the heartland of Australia.
Born in 1954, Andrew studied photography at Prahran College of Advanced Education under the guidance of well known photographers John Cato and Athol Smith. He went on to work as a newspaper photographer and afterwards, as a freelance photographer for Who Weekly, Time, Business Review Weekly, amongst others.
Andrew’s work resides in collections at The National Library in Canberra, The State Library of Victoria, The Monash Gallery of Art, The City of Montpellier in France, The Horsham Regional Gallery, The City of Knox, as well as many private collections.
Andrew Chapman's photography is also featured in the bestselling Beyond Reasonable Drought, a photographic record of one of the most challenging periods in Australia's agricultural history. Click here to read more about Beyond Reasonable Drought or to purchase the book.

Click on the cover image below for more information or to purchase Woolsheds.