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

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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 irony. Show all posts
Showing posts with label irony. Show all posts

Wednesday 25 August 2010

Gantry

Demolition of Cruise ship Terminal at Darling Harbour 8
The Gantry
I had wondered if the gantries were to be kept intact and possibly recycled for use at the new cruise ship terminal soon to be built at White Bay.
Ironically they are instead about to be demolished by the very same man who built the orange gantry only 8 years ago.
More irony :
At the foot of the gantry is an incongrous inscription in fading and cracked fluorescent cadmium yellow capital letters :
"KEEP"
plein air oil painting of the demolition of the Cruise Ship Terminal at the East Darling Harbour Wharves by industrial heritage artist Jane Bennett
Breakfast in the ruins with my half finished canvas
of the last gantry of Wharf 8,
the former cruise ship terminal of Barangaroo
plein air oil painting of the demolition of the Cruise Ship Terminal at the East Darling Harbour Wharves by industrial heritage artist Jane Bennett
My painting of the last gantry of Wharf 8
plein air oil painting of the demolition of the Cruise Ship Terminal at the East Darling Harbour Wharves by industrial heritage artist Jane Bennett



































































Sunday 8 August 2010

Out of Time

Painting inside the hall of the former cruise ship terminal at Wharf 8, South Barangaroo

plein air oil painting of demolished cruise ship terminal Wharf 8 on the Hungry mile, now Barangaroo painted by maritime heritage artist Jane Bennett
"Out of time " 2010
oil painting on canvas 31 x 31 cm

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A poignant little genre painting. Stopped clocks; a security sign; an abandoned storeroom.
Industrial memento mori.
A memento mori, or "reminder of death" is a familiar motif from medieval art. Sometimes a gruesome skeleton clothed in tattered flesh holds a scroll bearing the Latin inscription, "I am what you will be. I was what you are. For every man is this so."
Other paintings have more subtle ways of implying the same message - a piece of rotting fruit or an overblown rose in a Dutch 17th century still life; an hourglass or a mirror may mark the passage of time in a portrait.
Every good still life painting should have at least a whiff of mortality about it; a slight sting in the tail; a spoonful of medicine to make the sugar go down.
I found a plaque commemorating the opening of this building - 1999. Not all that long ago, but already it seems like an eon has passed.
Sydney Ports Corporation has just arrived to take possession of this sign.
I found its inscription hilarious - it was about how passengers with cardiac pacemakers were not to go through the X ray machines, but had to be bodily searched by the security guards!
if they didn't have heart problems to start with they would when they finished; all the excitement might prove too much!
It is such an insecure security sign.