Lalor and surrounds with David Wadelton
David Wadelton's photographic work for our Cultural Collection captures the homes and shopping precincts of Lalor and surrounds.
In 2016 we commissioned David to document this area, with a focus on Station Street and May Road. He also photographed a number of the houses in nearby streets that were built as part of the well-known Peter Lalor Home Building Cooperative 1946-2012.
His images are a vital part of our collection as these homes are disappearing; demolished to make way for townhouses as urban density increases.
About David Wadelton
Born in Terang, Victoria, David now lives and works in Melbourne. He studied visual art at Preston and Phillip Institutes in Melbourne, graduating in 1976 and 1982 respectively. Since the early 1980s he has exhibited extensively throughout Australia with regular solo exhibitions at Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne.
As a young visual arts graduate in the 1970s, David took long walks through Northcote and surrounds, shooting ‘the most mundane things around’: people walking or riding public transport, cars, shopfronts, billboards, footpaths, street signs, junk.
‘I thought that if I photographed a bus stop or a milk bar or a laundromat I could maybe imbue it with a sense of mystery, which didn't really happen at the time.’
In time his painting overtook photography, but he continued to shoot street scenes around Melbourne. That elusive ‘sense of mystery’ finally emerged 35 years later and the seed was planted for his 2011 exhibition, Icons of Suburbia, when he found that those photographs had taken on a new life by capturing a city that no longer exists.
More recently, David's work formed part of the 2021–2022 ‘Who’s Afraid of Public Space’ exhibition at the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art in Melbourne. His work can also be viewed in collections throughout Australia including the National galleries of Victoria and Australia.
‘His photographs present a compelling account of contemporary life and the urban condition in inner-city Melbourne – preserving the past whilst simultaneously registering the transformation and gentrification that has occurred over the past decades, as a result of changing demographics and patterns of migration, technological and industrial change, the flight of industry and the arrival of information and service economies which characterise the post-Fordist economic era. Collected in publications including the recent Small Business, (M.33 Books, Melbourne, 2021), Wadelton’s photographs speak volumes about the social and urban history and transformation of inner-suburban Melbourne, its architectural heritage, changing styles and social mores, personalities and protagonists.‘
Max Delany, Who’s Afraid of Public Space