Industrial Cathedral

Industrial Cathedral
"Industrial Cathedral" charcoal on paper 131 x 131 cm Jane Bennett. Finalist in 1998 Dobell Drawing Prize Art Gallery of NSW Finalist 1998 Blake Prize Winner 1998 Hunter's Hill Open Art Prize

About Me

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Sydney, NSW, Australia
I'm an Industrial Heritage Artist who paints "en plein air".If it's damaged, derelict, doomed and about to disappear, I'll be there to paint it.
Showing posts with label Barangaroo. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Barangaroo. Show all posts

Saturday 9 July 2022

The Other Art Fair at Barangaroo



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Going to the fair!
The Other Art Fair, Barangaroo, July 21 - 24
I am proud to have been selected to participate in The Other Art Fair at the Cutaway at Barangaroo in Sydney, July 21st to 24th.
I am so excited to show you my plein air painting series ‘The Hungry Mile'.
They were all painted 'en plein air' when Barangaroo was still the "Hungry Mile Wharf" on the exact spot where The Other Art Fair, Sydney will be held.
 
A preview of some of the works I'll exhibit 
 

OPENING HOURS
Thursday 21 July 4-7PM / 7-10PM
Friday     22 July 2PM – 10PM
Saturday 23 July 10AM – 6PM
Sunday   24 July 10AM – 5PM


 

Discounted tickets for followers of my blog:

  • 25% discount off tickets for Friday to Sunday, redeemable using the promo Tickets Code: OTHERS25
  • To book tickets, visit: https://www.theotherartfair.com/sydney/tickets
  • Enter the code OTHERS25 in the ‘Enter Promo Code’ field.
  • Note: you need to select the Promo Code option before you select any ticket times.
  • Hint: the promo code link is on the right under the heading ‘Please select your ticket option below’
  • This code gives  25% off all ticket types until July 21.
  • Promo Code must be used by July 21
Please join me and 110 other artists at The Cutaway at Barangaroo, July 21st to 24th. It would be lovely to see you there.

For more of my paintings of this area

"Paintings of a passing Port"

 "The Last of the Hungry Mile"

"Barangaroo - Tabula Rasa" 

"Sydney Harbour Control Tower"

 

Friday 28 August 2020

Norfolk Guardian

Today's painting on my deck gallery is a diptych of an unusual visitor to the East Darling Harbour Wharves.
I spent most of the early 2000s as ‘Artist in Residence’ on the East Darling Harbour Wharves before its redevelopment into Barangaroo. 
One day in 2005 I arrived very early on a calm clear morning & a couple of wharfies grabbed me as I signed in.They were very excited & yelled “Quick, get your easel, you must paint the Norfolk Guardian- you don’t see ships like this every day!” 
A smallish vessel was docking at Wharf 5. It had an oddly shaped crane in its centre, which I later found out was known as a ‘derrick’ crane as it looked similar to the old fashioned oil rigs. A Derrick ship’s crane is a relic of the past, harking back to the days before containerization forced uniformity of ship design & changed their lines from sleek to squat & boxy.
The luminous peach tones of the horizon meeting the skyline of Goat Island & the northern suburbs in the background harmonized with the butter yellow ship's crane & sky blue hull, making an odd contrast with the heavy industrial subject matter. 
I watched the complex interplay of the ship's crane with the shore crane with a mixture of fascination & trepidation as rows of pipes were unloaded with consummate skill.
I didn't know how long I'd have to paint it before it left, so I added an extra canvas to the original one, making the total image a square.
Plein air oil painting of Islander ship Norfolk Guardian unloading at East Darling Harbour Wharves painted by Jane Bennett
DH34A-B'The Norfolk Guardian Diptych' 2005





























 
       










 
each panel oil on canvas 91 x 46 cm
Available for sale

The M.V. Norfolk Guardian (IMO: 8600856) is a General Cargo that was built in 1987, sailing under the flag of Tonga, & freighting break bulk cargo to Norfolk Island, New Zealand & the South Pacific. Ports of call include Norfolk Island, Auckland, Lyttleton & Marsden Point, Tasmania. Transhipments can be arranged to various destinations in the South Pacific, including Samoa, Fiji, etc.
Cargo handled by the Norfolk Guardian includes: general cargo, hazardous goods, freezer/cooler, hardwood poles, sawn timber, processed timber products.
They also ship Personal Effects from Norfolk Island & New Zealand to Yamba, Australia.
"Break bulk" is a term used for products which can't be transported in containers. It includes a wide mix of articles- from salt, gypsum, cement to timber, steel coils and heavy machinery as well as cars, trucks and boats.

About 50 years ago, the containerization of shipping modified the wharves dramatically & transformed port cities beyond recognition.

The humble shipping container isn't just a metal box - it created the world as we know it today.

Once goods were loaded and transported around the world as "break bulk" cargo. Container standardization revolutionized global trade, making it easier, quicker and cheaper. However,with the advent of the container, some of the mystery & magic of the shipping industry was lost forever.

John Crowley, the Port Operations Manager, used to describe the East Darling Harbour Wharves (aka Port Jackson) as a ‘boutique’ wharf. 
Port Botany is built on a superhuman scale and only deals with containers, so is huge, homogeneous and increasingly run by robots. Port Jackson, on the other hand, had a mix of break-bulk & containers & therefore was more dependent on the personal skills and judgement of the individual wharf workers. 
Islander ships are dwarfed by the container ships & totally unsuitable for the huge computerized straddle cranes of Port Botany. 
Now that the East Darling Harbour Wharves are closed, most "break bulk" is unloaded at Port Kembla, although Blackwattle Bay and to an increasingly lesser extent Glebe Island and White Bay still handle salt, cement and gypsum. 
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Sunday 9 August 2020

Crane, East Darling Harbour Wharves

In 2003, the State Government announced that the stevedoring wharves at East Darling Harbour, on the western edge of Miller's Point, known since the Depression as the 'Hungry Mile', would be transformed into a new urban precinct, which would later be known as Barangaroo.
The wharf has now closed forever and Sydney’s traditional role as a working harbour is essentially over.
For Sydney Harbour no longer to be a working port and to be stripped of its original character and purpose, was almost unthinkable.
I resolved to paint its hidden history before it was too late. This concrete expanse was often derided as 'ugly', usually by people who had never set foot on it, but I found it a rich and fascinating source of inspiration for a series of several hundred paintings.

I became 'Artist in Residence' in 2003, and was still painting there after the last wharfie left in October 2007. I always painted 'en plein air', even though the completed works have the compositional poise of a Jeffrey Smart.Plein air painting of Liebherr Crane undergoing maintenance on East Darling Harbour Wharves, now Barangaroo, painted by industrial and marine heritage artist Jane Bennett
DH135A 'Maintaining the crane' Diptych
2007 oil on canvas 51 x 25.5cm each panel
Available for sale

This was painted towards the end of East Darling Harbour's days as an operational wharf. I had often painted each of the 3 cranes on the wharf, although being able to get all three in a single canvas was nearly impossible. They didn't run on rails - they all had retractable stabilizers in the shape of pyramids, and these lifted to allow the cranes to trundle up and down the wharf on their rows of tyres.
I spent much of my time on the wharf chasing these wretched things up and down the wharf, in hot pursuit of my recalcitrant subjects. Even if their lower halves stayed put, they were raising, lowering, twisting and turning. I'd have to start 4 or 5 small canvases, each one with the crane in a different pose.
This crane was "L1" the oldest & most complicated of the 3 Liebherr cranes known by the wharfies as "Big Bird" as apparently it was originally yellow. 
It was loathed by the wharfies as it was complex and rather over-engineered, so prone to breaking down. The L3 crane was much easier to operate and maintain, and incidentally, much easier for me to paint. If the L1 crane moved even slightly out of its original position, it was infinitely harder for me to predict what I should alter to adapt the old position to the new one. The result is that I have a lot more unfinished and unfinishable paintings of this crane than of the 2 others put together. 
Plein air painting of Liebherr Crane undergoing maintenance on East Darling Harbour Wharves, now Barangaroo, painted by industrial and marine heritage artist Jane Bennett
DH135A 'Maintaining the crane' left panel of Diptych
2007 oil on canvas 51 x 25.5cm each panel
Available for sale

When I was painting on the wharves, all three cranes were red, which made them difficult to paint against the red Wallenius Wilhelmsen ships. 
Although they were all a shade of red, and more than likely had been painted at the same time with the same brand of paint, each of the cranes was a different shade of red. Not just lighter or darker, but some were definitely more towards the pink than red. The L1 crane was a light- medium bluish pink, the sort of pink derived from mixing magenta or alizarin crimson with white. L2 veered between napthol crimson, Windsor bright red and in the more care-worn patches, the pink obtained by mixing white with cadmium red deep. L3 was in places almost a true red, requiring mostly cadmium red medium and even a few vermilion highlights. All these colours had very different properties, as the cadmium colours were very opaque and the alizarin and magenta were semi-transparent and took much longer to dry. They had one thing in common though, they were amongst the most expensive paints to buy - Series 4. 5 or 6. The prices go up exponentially from Series 1. Series 2 paints are about half as much again as the previous series, Series 3 half to two thirds as much as 2, etc, etc. As usually the cranes were in front of a red Wallenius Wilhelsen ship, which was a different hue of red again (usually cadmium red light), this meant that the art shops became seriously rich from my stint as 'Artist in Residence ' on the wharf. But to do justice to the scene in front of me I had to be true to the subtle nuances of the changing light and colour in front of me.
Plein air painting of Liebherr Crane undergoing maintenance on East Darling Harbour Wharves, now Barangaroo, painted by industrial and marine heritage artist Jane Bennett
DH135A 'Maintaining the crane' right hand Diptych
2007 oil on canvas 51 x 25.5cm each panel
Available for sale

Later in 2007, all three cranes were painted yellow again in the AT & T colours. A couple were taken to Melbourne's Webb Dock, but 'Big Bird' was taken down to Port Kembla on the "Sea-Tow" barge.
It's still at Port Kembla - I noticed it when I was painting the Port Kembla Copper Stack before it was demolished in February 2014.
I painted this diptych in 2007 as it was undergoing much needed maintenance in front of Wharf 6, not long before its new paint job and long sea journey.
The odd looking object wrapped in white is a helicopter. Some of the wharfies had been discussing what would be the most difficult object to wrap as a birthday present, so that the recipient wouldn't be able to guess what it was. One of them suggested a tricycle, but I think the helicopter would have won that competition.
 
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