Shared Experience: No 1 projectile shop, (Commonwealth Ordnance Factory, Maribyrnong)
Sybil Craig
No 1 projectile shop, (Commonwealth Ordnance Factory, Maribyrnong)
oil on hardboard
45.4 x 39.7cm
Craig’s colourful and impressionistic work captures the activity of women operating electric lathes to perform single tasks on 18- or 25-pounder shells before these are passed on to the next operator. With the escalation of the war and much of the male workforce away fighting, women replaced men in the factories. As process workers they were trained for specific operations that were often dangerous and onerous. To protect them from the machines and the dirt they wore overalls and snoods over their hair.
Paintings
- Corvette Galley
Leonard Brooks - Glass-blowers 'Gathering' from the Furnace
Mervyn Peake - Parachute Riggers
Paraskeva Clark - Sections of buoyancy tank and floating caissons, Sydney graving dock
Herbert McClintock - No 1 projectile shop, (Commonwealth Ordnance Factory, Maribyrnong)
Sybil Craig - Working in the snow, Australian Forestry Unit, Scotland
Sheila Hawkins - Hull Riveting
Frederick B. Taylor - ATS at Work
Rodrigo Moynihan - The Camouflage Workshop, Leamington Spa, 1940
Edwin La Dell - The Merchant Navy: The chain-locker
Henry Carr - Private Roy, Canadian Women's Army Corps
Molly Lamb Bobak - Ruby Loftus screwing a Breech-ring
Dame Laura Knight - The billy boy
William Dobell - Transport driver (Aircraftwoman Florence Miles)
Nora Heysen - Weighing Down The Tail, New Brunswick
Moses Reinblatt - Patients waiting Outside a First Aid Post in a Factory
Ruskin Spear