When you enter Hamer Hall, you feel like you’ve stepped into an underground cave – one of several nods to Australia’s resources industry.
Designer John Truscott thought up the idea while driving through a basalt cutting in Melbourne’s eastern suburbs. He worked with theatre scenery artists Paul Kathner and Ross Turner, who spent 18 months spray painting Hamer Hall's bare concrete walls with layers and layers of paint to create the incredible subterranean feel.
Kathner and Turner went on to create Melbourne-based Scenic Studios, which continues to make theatrical scenic art and backdrops today. They returned during the venue’s two-year renovation (2010–2012) to give the walls a new lick of paint: years of cigarette smoke, plus the application of acoustic foam spray, had muted the once-vivid ‘rock’.
"The minerals and cave concept for Hamer Hall was very Australian derivative, but in fact a lot of overseas materials were used," says Claudia Funder, Research Centre Coordinator at Arts Centre Melbourne.
"The original leather on the Hamer Hall foyer walls was Scottish because the hides of Australian cows were too pricked by barbed wire to be used!"
With walls painted in colours and patterns that reflect Australia’s gemstone deposits, giving the impression the building was carved out of a hillside, around 25 million people have walked through Hamer Hall’s doors to soak up the wonder of the performing arts.
The inside walls of Hamer Hall. Photographer David Parker.
If you would like to share with us your fondest memory or interesting story of Hamer Hall – we want to hear it! Help us celebrate this milestone anniversary.
