About Hills Hoist Suburbia
A rotary clothes hoist of hot-dip galvanised tube, cranked up over a quarter-acre of buffalo lawn. Lance Hill welded the first in his Adelaide backyard in 1945; the National Library called it a National Treasure sixty-one years later. The zinc has weathered to a light blue-grey, hexagonal spangle still readable in the coating.
This system takes its ground from that metal and its graphics from Howard Arkley — flat house fronts, hard black outlines, dayglo pink and orange landing as hits rather than fields. Four-arm radial symmetry, taut line runs, and a lot of empty ground.
- Origin
- Adelaide and the postwar suburbs of Australia
- Era
- 1945–1990 (Toyne's rotary patent 1911; Lance Hill's Adelaide hoist 1945; Arkley's suburban paintings 1980s–1990s)
- Key figures
- Lance Hill · Gilbert Toyne · Howard Arkley
- Movements
- Australian postwar suburban design · industrial galvanising · Australian pop and airbrush painting
Hills Hoist Suburbia design spec
Colors
Typography
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