John Hayward (Hoyleton)
Since 2003 I have shared an artists’ studio space with its owner Will Powrie in the Hoyleton Hall which used to be the old institute building in that region of the Mid-North of South Australia.
We established the space in the main hall as a wood-working workshop with a variety of saws, a planer and several work benches. Here we process mainly salvaged second-hand timbers to make into furniture and sculptures and the stage has become a space for the storage of timber and plywood. The room at the back that was built in the 1920s as the supper room is our living area with a kitchen, lounge and sleeping areas.
When Will bought the building in 2003 the first thing we did was to construct a deck on the back of the supper room from recycled timbers. This is now a pleasant place to eat breakfast and watch the birds that now occupy the re-established native trees and shrubs in the grounds.
When going from the supper room to the workshop we have to pass through one of the stage doors and down some steps to get to the hall. In so doing I was always aware of the names of people written on the back of these doors during the hall’s one-hundred-year history.
By 2006 I had retired from making and designing furniture commercially and decided to undertake an archaeology degree at Flinders University. This eventually became a PhD focusing upon Indigenous archaeology and rock art in particular. I think it must have been this focus upon the meaning and value of personalised art-making in a cultural landscape that prompted me to look more closely at the inscriptions on the back of the stage doors. I started to investigate who the people were who had left their mark in that space.
My research established that many of the inscriptions were left by the travelling artists who performed on the stage from as far back as the 1920s.
What I found out about these performers revealed a rich culture of travelling vaudeville, local entertainment and fundraising in rural Australia that had occurred on the very stage that is now part of our workshop. You can read more about these performers in my paper published in the Journal of Australian Studies in April 2023 called ‘The Hoyleton Institute stage door inscriptions and the ghosts of forgotten travelling performers.’
The Hoyleton Institute Stage Door Inscriptions and the Ghosts of Forgotten Travelling Performers