A Piece of History: Tom Bass’ Broadway Studio (Part 2)

Words from Ingrid Morley

Carrying on from Part 1, this week long-time TBSSS teacher and renowned sculptor Ingrid Morley continues our journey down memory lane to discover what life at the School was like in the late 1980s. Hailing from South Africa, Ingrid now has a studio near Jenolan Caves in the Central Tablelands of NSW, where she also lives. She has been a special guest teacher in the TBSSS Life Study program between 2018 – 21, as well as judge of the Tom Bass Prize for Figurative Sculpture in 2018 and 2020. She has featured in Solo shows in Australia, China and France and featured in the well-known Sculpture by the Sea, Bondi exhibitions for many years, amongst group shows in regional Australia and Defiance Gallery, Sydney. You can learn more about her Ingrid on her website.

Ingrid worked with Tom for over three years in the very early days of the School. Let’s see what she has to say…

Ingrid’s recollections

Huge factory windows which hadn’t been cleaned in centuries filtered the light onto the work benches as you arrived on the top floor of the Tom Bass Broadway Studio. The ardour of walking up the stairwell, which appeared to connect with all noble spirits, was breath taking and reminded me of the base of the beanstalk, up which Jack climbed – an enchanted stairway…

Figure 1

Rather than a factory building in Ultimo, Sydney, you were greeted by a corrugated iron roof and wooden floorboards, reminiscent of an Australian outback woolshed. These handsome floorboards had been laid after the original goldsmith’s workshop had moved on – the original boards had been lifted and burnt to recover the gold dust. The space stood empty for years prior to Tom moving in and setting up the School in 1974.

Everything was bathed in light, and gentleness. In this unreal air the smell of earthiness was overwhelming. The clay bin, which occupied a corner of the studio, was opened for the day, and like a soul, the clay was ritually watered, tucked in and put to bed at night. 

When I first arrived at the Studio in 1988, as a recent migrant from South Africa, I felt like a small boat lost at sea. 

Here in this Studio I could make concrete my daydreams and hold my own against the roar and thunder of the city and the sadness and loss I was experiencing at that time. Tom’s teaching looked seriously at free play of imagination, contemplation and dreaming. There was no radio or noise apart from the soft sounds of students at work in this boundless silence, three floors up off Broadway.

Figure 2

Heavy materials and some sculptures were winched up and down the factory lift on a wooden platform, accessed through a safety gate held together with a cup hook. Pretty terrifying to look down three stories…a couple of wooden slats half covered this cavernous hole – the only way to get supplies and the heavier sculpture to the ground floor. There were plenty of stories about those who nearly went down but saved themselves by putting their elbows out at the last minute and were left swinging!

Broadway was a place of yarns and hard work, where I learnt about sculpture and the Australian spirit. All the stories Tom would tell became part of this special place; stories of childhood in Gundagai and Erskineville, war time, poverty and the horse and cart – the remnants of those days still to be found in the narrow laneway, before the redevelopment of the studio block on Howard Lane, home to the Tom Bass Sculpture Studio School until 1998.

Next time: In our third and final piece, we will hear from veteran TBSSS teacher Christine Crimmins about her memories of the Broadway space. Stay tuned!

Images Captions:

Figure 1: Archival image of students at work with Tom Bass in the Broadway Studio.

Figure 2: Ingrid at work in the Broadway Studio with a life model in 1989 (photo credit: David Clare; image supplied by Ingrid Morley).