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

My photo
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 memento mori. Show all posts
Showing posts with label memento mori. Show all posts

Thursday 2 May 2019

Selfie at South Eveleigh (Watching the forge fires fade)

I don't usually paint self portraits, but this is the exception.
I've been asked to exhibit in "Selfie", an exhibition of self portraits by artists who don't normally specialize in portraiture.
I have painted myself in front of the largest surviving forge remaining in Australia, the Eveleigh Locomotive Workshop
"Selfie" is on display from 11th - 26th May at 1047 Gallery, 1047 Botany Road Mascot.
Opening Saturday 11th may 2-5pm, closing drinks 26th May 2-4pm.
 Open Saturday & Sunday 11 am - 4pm
0401 037 359     ten-forty-seven@mail.com

Invitation to "Selfie" Exhibition at 1047 Gallery, 1047 Botany Road Mascot
Invitation to "Selfie" Exhibition at 1047 Gallery
















 

self portrait with blacksmith forging at Eveleigh Works, South Eveleigh by industrial Heritage artist Jane Bennett
 E158 'Watching the forge fires fade'
 2019 acrylic on canvas 31 x 61cm
 










Available for sale
From 1886 until the 1980s, the Blacksmith’s Workshop produced equipment and parts for manufacturing and maintaining steam locomotives.
The modern blacksmiths of Eveleigh Works still use traditional machinery in homage to this bygone era of steam trains and handmade tools.
However, despite their much-loved status as icons of industrial heritage, the blacksmiths face an uncertain fate as a Woolworths will be built next door. 
In the maelstrom of inner city gentrification, blacksmiths are anachronisms; living fossils from the 19th century.
Much like plein air painters, I suppose.
The deep shadows and dramatic lighting of the forge evoke the evocative, melancholy poetry of nocturnal scenes painted by my heroes Caravaggio, Joseph Wright of Derby and Georges de la Tour. Their nocturnes are ‘memento mori’ paintings contemplating  transience and mortality. The flickering flame will soon be extinguished. 
My canvas is cloaked in darkness, yet a flash of intense illumination throws eerie green highlights across my face. Behind me the blacksmith darts gracefully backwards and forwards in his dangerous dance with fire.
My face looms in the foreground towards the viewer, lost in thought. My gaze doesn’t meet the viewer directly, but peers intently at something just out of sight. Am I looking back in nostalgia to the past, or staring warily at an unknown future?

Friday 21 July 2017

Oils ain't oils- Painting Still Life in the Eveleigh Railway Workshops

A still life typically depicts inanimate subject matter. 
It was initially despised as the most lowly form of painting. But every still life is a memento mori.
Memento mori is Latin for “Remember that you must die”.
I've delved into the long tradition of the ‘still life’ genre, which celebrates the magic power of painting an arrangement of
commonplace objects to reflect on ideas of mortality.
When captured in paint, they are imbued with a life beyond the ordinary.
"Vanitas” elements reveal the emptiness of material pursuits and futility of earthly ambitions.  
The Latin noun Vanitas literally means “emptiness” and the central theme in these paintings is the Christian view of earthly life and the futility  & worthlessness of all ambition.
I love to paint “useless” things from industrial sites, the minutiae of everyday life. There's a poignant quality in this “rubbish”, so trivial to most. These remnants provide me with an endless source of subject matter. There are no people in these pictures but their presence is always felt. History, memory and observation provide the bones of the story.
Plein air still life painting of old oil cans in Large Erecting Shop, Eveleigh Railway Workshops by industrial heritage artist Jane Bennett
E130A Oils ain't oils 1 2017 oil on canvas 10 x 10cm
These rusty old oil cans from the interior of the Large Erecting Shop in the Eveleigh Railway Workshops truly are symbols of transience. They will be discarded and thrown into the skip bin as soon as I've finished my canvases. I've won them a stay of execution with my paintings.
Plein air still life painting of old oil cans in Large Erecting Shop, Eveleigh Railway Workshops by industrial heritage artist Jane Bennett
E130B Oils ain't oils 2 2017 oil on canvas 10 x 10cm
They contained the necessary ingredient to lubricate engines to keep them moving. Literally, to make something go. 
And they went.
Locomotives won't be repaired and maintained in the Large Erecting Shop for much longer. The best possible future for it will be as a running shed where only exactly what is strictly necessary to run trains will be tolerated. All else will be relocated at best, or discarded at worst. If it doesn't become a running shed, Mirvac and Channel 7 are lurking just outside to finish it off.
Plein air still life painting of old oil cans in Large Erecting Shop, Eveleigh Railway Workshops by industrial heritage artist Jane Bennett
E130C Oils ain't oils 3 2017 oil on canvas 10 x 10cm
Behind the oil cans was a board with inscriptions "1/2 Nuts", "5/8 Nuts", "3/4 Nuts","7/8 Nuts", which always made me laugh. You don't have to be totally nuts to work her, just half.
Plein air still life painting of old oil cans in Large Erecting Shop, Eveleigh Railway Workshops by industrial heritage artist Jane Bennett
E132 Oils ain't oils 2 2017 oil on aluminium panel 51 x 51cm.
I've concocted different methods for reproducing variety of surfaces  by experimenting with painting on metal panels.
This works well with the rusty cans - I leave the metal bare of paint and only paint in the rust.
This technique pays homage to the distant past.
When light rebounds from a matte surface, the irregularites of the surface scatter the light. However when light strikes a smooth polished surface such as metal there is a gleam, shimmer or lustre which can even reveal the shape of the original light source. Medieval students of optics called the depiction of reflected light in a painting "splendour". Light was not only regarded as beautiful, but also deemed to be sacred. This quality of light was difficult to reproduce in painting. Early medieval artists would rely on the inclusion of reflective and precious metals such as gold leaf, until the development of oil painting in the 15th century allowed artists like van Eyck the ability to create the illusion of reflection by superimposing thin translucent layers of colour. 
The workmen trained in the Eveleigh Railway Workshops were master manipulators of metal, so in these still life paintings I am using both these artistic traditions to capture every nuance of their lost tools.

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Shadowboard

Ghost Train 

Revenant 

Nocturne - painting steam locomotive 3642

38's are great, mate 

Charge your battery 

Scar Tissue

Monday 19 June 2017

Charge your battery

Painting the interior of the Large Erecting Shop, Eveleigh Railway Workshops by industrial heritage artist Jane Bennett
Work in progress - E125 ' '2 windows
 in the Large Erecting Shop,
Eveleigh Railway Workshops'
2017 oil on canvas 46 x 46cm
  


















I painted while the interior of the Large Erecting Shop was being decluttered so it could be turned into a running shed.
There's the usual workshop detritus that's been lying around so long that everyone's forgotten who put it there and why.
Painting the interior of the Large Erecting Shop, Eveleigh Railway Workshops by industrial heritage artist Jane Bennett
Work in progress - E125 ' '2 windows
in the Large Erecting Shop,
Eveleigh Railway Workshops'
2017 oil on canvas 46 x 46cm


















In this area is an ancient trolley and a wooden pallet loaded with old lead acid batteries.
The lead acid battery, so familiar to motorists, was originally used to power the lights in train carriages while stopped at a station. It was invented in 1859 by French physicist Gaston Planté and is the oldest type of rechargeable battery.
Despite having a low energy-to-weight ratio and a low energy-to-volume ratio, the lead acid battery can supply high surge currents, so that the cells have a large power-to-weight ratio. This,as well as their low cost, made them an efficient way to provide the high current required by carstarter motors.
As electric cars take over the world, the lead acid battery will soon become obsolete.
So this still life is a fitting symbol of transience - an industrial memento mori.
Painting the interior of the Large Erecting Shop, Eveleigh Railway Workshops by industrial heritage artist Jane Bennett
Work in progress - E125 ' '2 windows
in the Large Erecting Shop,
Eveleigh Railway Workshops'
2017 oil on canvas 46 x 46cm
Between the windows in the foreground is an old slatted pine heavy duty trolley.
It has cast iron, rather than rubber wheels, so probably dates from the late 19th century.
Painting the interior of the Large Erecting Shop, Eveleigh Railway Workshops by industrial heritage artist Jane Bennett
Work in progress - E125 ' '2 windows
in the Large Erecting Shop,
Eveleigh Railway Workshops'
2017 oil on canvas 46 x 46cm

I see beauty in highlighting the truth, however random,awkward or clumsy it may be.. 

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Friday 18 July 2014

Ozymandias

Every ruin is a reminder that all things are destined for oblivion.
I am both artist and historian; painting amidst the detritus of the industrial past, walking under rusty girders in the shadow of toppled giants.
Plein air mixed media drawing of the now demolished Hammerhead Crane, Garden Island painted by industrial heritage artist Jane Bennett
'Under the Hammerhead Crane'
2014 ink pastel charcoal on paper 115 x 80cm
FINALIST : 2014 KOGARAH ART PRIZE
FINALIST : 2014 MOSMAN ART PRIZE
Available 


This is a mixed media painting of the Hammerhead Crane, which unfortunately is now being demolished, despite its iconic heritage status and distinguished history.
By now the "hammerhead" of the crane has been almost completely dismantled.
Instead of painting from the more familiar viewpoint of Mrs Macquarie's Chair opposite, I tackled the daunting bureaucracy of the Navy for permission to paint 'en plein air' on Garden Island itself.
I stood directly underneath the Crane and looked up into the top of the soaring structure, to capture its sheer scale. It is the embodiment of the 18th century concept of the sublime.
This painting has now been chosen as a finalist in both the Kogarah Art Prize and the Mosman Art Prize.
People are absent in many of my paintings, even though I trained as a figure painter and for 2 decades spent several days a week drawing and painting figures from life. I find that leaving out figures or relegating them to the role of "staffage" enhances the sense of the powerlessness of the individual against the inexorable forces of destruction and change. The crane itself is the best homage to the absent and largely forgotten workers who created the industrial landscapes that are now being destroyed.
Plein air mixed media drawing of the now demolished Hammerhead Crane, Garden Island painted by industrial heritage artist Jane Bennett
GIHC13 'The Hammerhead Crane - homage to Piranesi' 

2014 ink gouache on paper 56 x 76cm
Available
Spaces that have a sense of history, place and meaning, find an echo in art history.
The safety nets resemble fan vaulting in a ruined Gothic abbey and the zig-zag tangle of girders and scaffolding recall Piranesi's images of the 'Carceri' or the wreckage of the dying Roman Empire.
The Hammerhead Crane was built during World War II, and symbolized industrial might, the march of progress and confidence in the values of Western civilization.
The mood of past triumphalism is now tempered by the present reality of scuffed textures, rust and tarnished metal.
Even as a victim of the slow death of de-industrialization, it had retained a poignant grandeur as industrial memento mori.
The last gasp of the Industrial Revolution, and of Sydney's Working Harbour.
In the words of Shelley's ruin-poem Ozymandias "Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Except that a future civilization would be extremely lucky to be able to find any trace of our heroic past.


Related posts





Saturday 12 May 2012

Keep your eyes on the prize (and your finger off the trigger)

3 "Highly Commended" Awards in the past 3 days!
One off winning $1,250.
One off winning another $1,250.
And one off winning $5,000.
Don't know whether I should accept congratulations or commiserations.
I hadn't known until I collected my paintings today that I had been awarded two "High Commendations" for my entries in the Camden Art Prize.
I had been awarded the "Highly Commended" for  "The Art of Navigation". This is a memento mori painting of antique navigation instruments, and pays tribute to the famous 18th century navigator La Perouse.

still life oil painting of antique navigation instruments"The Art of Navigation" oil on canvas 75 x 100cm by Artist, Jane Bennett
"The Art of Navigation" oil on canvas 75 x 100cm














Yet another "Highly Commended" in the "Works on Paper" Section for a moody charcoal and ink interior, "The Turbine Hall Of the White Bay Power Station"

charcoal drawing of industrial Heritage"The Turbine Hall Of the White Bay Power Station" 2011 charcoal, pastel and ink on paper 75 x 100cm by Jane Bennett, Artist
"The Turbine Hall Of the White Bay Power Station"
2011 charcoal, pastel and ink on paper 75 x 100cm
The "Blacksmiths, Eveleigh" ranked first of the five "High Commendations" awarded in the Open Section of the Hunters Hill Art prize, making it the runner-up.

oil painting on canvas  of industrial heritage"The Blacksmiths, Eveleigh Railway Workshops" oil on canvas 91 x 122cm by Artist, Jane Bennett
"The Blacksmiths, Eveleigh Railway Workshops" 
oil on canvas 91 x 122cm
"The Navigator and the King"
The Art of Navigation
New still life paintings of navigation instruments
Inside Out
Power
Time for Safety
The fire within
Eveleigh - Industrial Heritage Artist at Work
Strike while the iron is hot
All fired up
The village smithy (sydney-eye.blogspot.com)
En plein air with street cred (sydney-eye.blogspot.com)

Sunday 28 August 2011

Spin me round

'You spin me right round, baby
Right round like a record, baby
Right round round round...'
"You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)" a song by the British band Dead or Alive. which was released as a single in 1984, the first UK No. 1 hit produced by Stock Aitken Waterman.
Not long after the last workers from White Bay Power Station left, never to return.
Record player from the recreation room of the White Bay Power Station, painted by industrial heritage artist Jane Bennett
WBPS66 'Spin me round' (record player from
recreation room in White Bay Power Station)
2009 oil on board 51.5 x 25.5cm
Available

The Record player from the Recreation room of the White Bay Power Station is the epitome of Jolie laide "ugly beautiful"
This horrible, yet oddly fascinating object was old and decrepit even back in the days when 'Dead or Alive' recorded their cheesy classic.
Record player from the recreation room of the White Bay Power Station, photographed by industrial heritage artist Jane Bennett
Record player from recreation room
in White Bay Power Station

It comes from a "lost" entertainment hall in a forsaken building - equal parts creepy and beautiful.
The Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority had taken ownership of the White Bay Power Station in 2000, but were unaware of this hall's existence for several years.
Record player from the recreation room of the White Bay Power Station, photographed by industrial heritage artist Jane Bennett
Recreation room in White Bay Power Station
As you can see from my photo, this room was a time-capsule from the 1950s - murals, the old record player and even a pool table.
The record player sat on the canteen counter, still connected to the room's PA system, ping-pong tables were folded in the middle of the room and murals on the wall had survived.
Record player from the recreation room of the White Bay Power Station, photographed by industrial heritage artist Jane Bennett
Recreation room in White Bay Power Station
In this photo, you can see the very kind security guard in the background by the pool table.
In July 2011, shortly after these photos and my painting were done, the record player and pool table were removed, as well as 6 tonnes of pigeon droppings.This was part of a frantic clean out before one of the rare open days.
I was very lucky to be able to see this in situ, and even luckier to have enough time to paint it before it was taken out of its natural context.
Record player from the recreation room of the White Bay Power Station, photographed by industrial heritage artist Jane Bennett
Record player from the recreation Room in White Bay Power Station
This was the last time I saw it before it was taken away to be put into storage.
They left it on the ground outside, so I could paint it one last time , waiting for some curator of the future to rediscover it and find a purpose for it.
Waiting for whatever the future holds for the White Bay Power Station.
Art Gallery, funky bar, museum,offices, block of flats?
Tunnels and tollways will encircle it, the schmick new yet-to-be-built fishmarkets will be its neighbour.
The White Bay Power Station remains strangely still and silent in the eye of the tornado of change.
The redevelopment of the surrounding area spins around it.
Like a record, baby, Right round round round...'

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Tuesday 9 November 2010

The Navigator and the King

These 2 paintings will be exhibited in the Laperouse Museum until January 2011.
They were inspired by meditation on the unpredictable nature of history, exploration and the fate of nations.
They are memento mori paintings in the tradition of 17th and 18th century still life 'vanitas' paintings.
The portrait of the gallant yet doomed La Perouse receiving his commission from his equally ill-fated monarch is doubly ironic.
The antipodean voyage of La Perouse was personally planned by the king together with the explorer. The loss of La Perouse and his expedition caused Louis XVI both personal grief and political humiliation.
still life vanitas oil painting of maps hourglass compass telescope & other antique navigation instruments by heritage artist Jane Bennett
'La Perouse - the navigator and the King'
2010 oil on canvas 46 x 46cm

Enquiries about this painting
Louis XVI sought to reinvigorate the stagnating French economy through trade and had invested a great deal of the government finances into improving the French Navy.
This was both a personal and a political goal.
His private study was filled with nautical charts and the burnished brass of mathematical instruments, telescopes, sextants and the locks which the King himself designed and made.
Louis XVI desperately wanted to regain the colonial power and prestige lost by his grandfather in the Seven Year’s War. Most of the debt burdening his government was from French involvement in the revolt of the American colonies against Britain.
A radical program of naval reconstruction was undertaken by first Turgot, then Sartine and finally de Castries. These brilliant, though fiscally irresponsible men attempted to transform the French navy into the equal of the British fleet, but heroic projects such as the transformation of Cherbourg harbour came at a ruinous price.
still life vanitas oil painting of maps, hourglass, compass, telescope, maps, skull  & other antique navigation instruments by heritage artist Jane Bennett
La Perouse - 'The Art of Navigation'
2010 oil on canvas 75 x 100cm
Enquiries about this painting


It was a real 'Sliding Doors' moment.
If Governor Philip and all his ships had been lost at sea and instead La Perouse had made a triumphant return to France after adding the continent of Australia to France’s extensive colonial empire, what could have been the outcome?
Would Australia have been settled by French colonists or become a battleground between the French and British Empires as Canada had been?
If La Perouse’s expedition had ended in a blaze of glory, would the good publicity have sufficiently enhanced the reputation of the monarchy to withstand the economic and social pressures that resulted in the anarchy of the Revolution?
Now that the exhibition in the LaPerouse Museum has finished, I'm going to enter "The Art of Navigation" in the Camden Art Prize.
It's far too strange to win, it'll just confuse the judges.
But I feel like being brave.
And it will certainly stand out in the crowd.
Update : It was runner-up!


Related posts


The Art of Navigation

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

Available
Enquiries about this painting


























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.