Heritage tiler Michael Hathaway, ceramic conservation specialist Penny Byrne and Regina Laity, one of the original mural artists have been working this week to restore parts of Benalla's iconic Ceramic Mural.
Photo by
Simon Ruppert
Benalla’s Ceramic Mural is one-of-a-kind.
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Listed as part of Benalla Art Gallery’s collection, it’s much more than simply a work of art
It’s a landmark, a meeting place, a concert venue, a musical instrument and an iconic part of the Rose City.
Originally created in the 1980’s by a dedicated team of volunteers, time has taken a toll and in recent years it had been shedding tiles, and in places, becoming unsafe.
However, for the past week a restoration team has been at Benalla’s lakeside bringing it back to its former glory.
One of those is Penny Byrne, object conservator specialising in ceramics conservation at the Grimwade conservation services at the University of Melbourne.
She said issues arose following the deterioration of the adhesive originally used to fix the mural’s tiles in place.
“The tiling adhesive was really good at the time, but it had reached its end of life,” she said.
“It wasn't that the original artist did anything wrong, it's just given way over the years.”
Stage-one restoration of Benalla's Ceramic Mural has focused on urgent works.
The repairs and restoration work is taking part in three stages.
“The wall that we fixed this time was part of our urgent works,” Ms Byrne said.
“We'll be back, hopefully next year, to do another really big part of the restoration.
“But this part was actually about to collapse.
“It had been covered with a tarp for about a year and had temporary fencing around it.
“We've needed to run a special adhesive concrete mix in and behind the cracked wall, and it took 20 kilos of cement as part of that process.”
Ms Byrne said a big bonus of the restoration is that it is using the original tiles which had become loose, or fallen off.
“Luckily, the ones that had fallen off were kept at the art gallery,” she said.
“We've run the liquid adhesive in behind the main wall section to reinforce that.
“Then we've re-adhered all of the detached tiles along the top with special tiling cement.
“And we've actually tinted the grout to match the original.”
The work was done with the assistance of heritage tiler, Michael Hathaway and original ceramic mural artist Regina Laity.
“She's been really fantastic to have working with us,” Ms Byrne said.
“She was here working on it originally and knows it well.”
The urgent work stage is now complete, with the next two stages set to not only repair various areas, but also future-proofing the structure.
“Next will be the essential works, we are hoping to do next year,” Ms Byrne said.
“That will focus on the north facade, which is along the upper terrace, where a lot of tiles have fallen off.
“We also need to do repointing all over it because a lot of the mortar is failing, and we’ll give it a good clean.”
Another issue the mural has faced is water-damage.
Some of the original parts of the mural included small holes for water drainage, some did not.
Ms Byrne said the bits without any drainage had not fared as well, and creating a way for water to drain will help them last much longer.
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