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 ship. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ship. Show all posts

Sunday 30 August 2020

Heavy Lifting

Plein air oil painting of crane lifting a boat at the Hungry Mile, East Darling harbour Wharves painted by marine artist Jane Bennett
DH143 Preparing for a boat lift
2007 oil on canvas 92 x 122cm

Available for sale

 










 
 
 
 
Today's painting on my easel on the deck gallery was a large canvas painted during my stint as "Artist in Residence" at the East Darling Harbour Wharves. Very few container ships were docked at the East Darling Harbour Wharves - in its last 5 years of operations most went to Botany, which handled container or "boxes" only. 
The East Darling Harbour Wharves specialized in break bulk cargo - items that can’t be transported by container, sometimes resulting in a diverse & rather incongruous payload. Sand, salt, gypsum was bagged or piled in gleaming unstable mounds on the wharf. Rolls of steel, pipes & timber lengths for construction were stacked in piles inside the sheds. Cars, vans, trucks, forklifts, excavators  & agricultural machinery were driven down the ramps of the Ro-ros at breakneck speed as though the wharfies were auditioning for yet another remake of ‘the Italian Job’ or the ‘Fast & the Furious”, & then parked in neat rows until they were lifted or driven onto B-doubles. 
A selection of excavators, mining or agricultural machinery and the ubiquitous rolls of steel coils would lie for weeks inside the sheds.  Luxurious 'hot-water' boats, most of which were larger than my house and definitely cost more, were nonchalantly lifted off the ships & dangled from the cranes like giant earrings. Some of these boats were so enormous that they looked almost capable of carrying the ship that brought them. There were even more oddball items such as helicopters, train carriages, yachts & caravans. And one unforgettable afternoon  a couple of horses broke free while being unloaded from their box and had to be caught and restabled, turning the wharf into a wild west show.
Plein air oil painting of crane lifting a boat at the Hungry Mile, East Darling harbour Wharves painted by marine artist Jane Bennett
DH143 Preparing for a boat lift
2007 oil on canvas 92 x 122cm

Available for sale














 
 
 
 
This canvas was painted from the centre of the area between the Patrick offices in Shed 5, looking north towards Shed 4, with the western end of Balmain in the background. The huge white shed of White Bay can be seen in the background in the gap between the crane & the boat that has just been unloaded.
The giant vermilion crane, “L3” is bathed in clear morning light, poised with its pink spreader aloft in mid air. It had just placed the boats on wooden structures known as “Nafis” so they could be hooked up to one of the 2 rather elderly forklifts to be positioned on the wharf until they were transferred onto a B-double truck & delivered to a marina. I asked whether the term ‘Nafi’ was an abbreviation or a brand name, or anything to do with the naval term 'Naafi" but nobody on the wharf seemed to know the origin of the word. Like many other items on the wharf, the Nafis were brightly painted, mostly in primary colours, but here there is an orange one on the left hand side & a green one on the left.  There were random clusters of them stacked neatly one on top of the other all over the wharf. 
The unnaturalistic colours of the machinery added to the pervasive feeling of living inside a Jeffrey Smart painting. The maintenance workers, who serviced the cranes & forklifts, always wore bright orange overalls, of exactly the same hue as the witches hats. I know that none of it was arranged deliberately to help me compose my painting, but there was a pleasing compositional triangle of the orange –clothed workman striding purposefully away from the orange sled, with the orange witches hat in the foreground. The spreader directly above his head also has a matching orange “A” shaped crane attachment, although to strike a discordant note, its framework is a teeth-jarring shade of pink. The reds, pinks & oranges of the machinery stand out strongly against the large expanse of clear pale blue sky & matching strip of sea are interrupted by the sap green of the trees of Balmain in the background. Oddly, the completed painting has the poise and compositional balance of Jeffrey Smart and Edward Hopper, although painted under infinitely more trying circumstances than a neat white studio. Although large & complex, this was a pure plein air painting- totally painted outdoors, no photography, no tricks. Just the culmination of a lifetime of observation.
It was an eye-opening experience to be able to see first-hand, how much work & how many people have to be involved in providing goods that we take for granted.
This was painted in September 2007, in the last few weeks of East Darling Harbour Wharves activity as an operational wharf. The following week, all three shore cranes were repainted in the yellow & white colours of AT & T livery, prior to being moved onto a barge & towed to their new homes in Webb Dock, Melbourne & Port Kembla.
Related Posts 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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. 
Related Posts 
 
 
 
 
 

Tuesday 4 August 2020

Painting Sydney Harbour in the footsteps of Turner

All this winter I've felt something's been lacking.
Vivid.
Due to Covid-19 it couldn't be held this year, and for all I know New Year's Eve and Australia Day celebrations may not be held in the foreseeable future either.
I've often mocked Sydney for valuing style over substance, but I have to confess that I like a mindlessly pretty display of fairy lights against a harbour view as much as anyone.
So for anyone getting withdrawal symptoms, here's one on the easel of my deck gallery.
Oil painting - nocturne of Sydney Harbour with tall ship, fireworks and Sydney Harbour Bridge painted by industrial and marine artist Jane Bennett
U118 Fireship under the Bridge
oil on canvas 2003 61 x 91cm
Available for sale

This canvas of the burning ship against a backdrop of fireworks illuminating the Sydney Harbour Bridge was painted in the studio from a series of quick gouache studies that I did on New Year's Eve 2003, well over a decade before Vivid was ever thought of. I regard this as a sort of 'proto-Vivid'.
It added a new dimension to the usual fireworks and was a startling sight if you weren't aware that it was in fact a special effect, and not a tragic fire on board the 'James Craig'.
The first time I saw it, like hundreds, possibly thousands of others, I rang 000 in a panic to report it. You could almost hear the person from Emergency Services rolling their eyes, as they assured me that it was just a special effect, that , no, the James Craig was just fine, and thanked me for my misplaced concern.
The Fireship apparently commemorated an early 19th century convict ship that had caught fire, and in the weeks after, during the Sydney Festival, there was a 'son et lumiere' show every night for a couple of weeks. I forget the details and the story, and frankly I think everyone else did as well. The images of the fire reflected in the water were all the spectators really were interested in, and the story seemed just a flimsy excuse.
As I painted some quick sketches in gouache and watercolour, I was glad that i'd spent so much of my 1996 Marten Bequest Traveling Art Scholarship holed up in the Print and Drawing Room of the Clore Gallery (the section of the Tate Gallery devoted to the work of Turner, obsessively painting studies of the many fabulous Turner watercolours in their collection. The Petworth series and the burning of the Houses of Parliament were my favourites. I became so good at painting them that the staff became slightly alarmed, and demanded that I sign my studies on the back so that I wouldn't be able to do a bit of a 'switcheroo' while their backs were turned! I took this as a sort of a backhanded compliment, but my goal wasn't to just mindlessly copy, but to try to conquer the mystery of painting sea,sky, storm, night and fire. How to make the intangible, tangible.
When I returned from my Traveling Art Scholarship, I actually exhibited some of these in a couple of exhibitions "The Grand Tour" and "In the Footsteps of the Masters" that acted like a sort of debriefing - a transition phase from the scholarship to the routine of regular commercial exhibitions.
I'd seen a lot of amazing art, and learnt a lot, but how was I going to incorporate this into what I would paint on my return?
Oil painting - nocturne of Sydney Harbour with tall ship, fireworks and Sydney Harbour Bridge painted by industrial and marine artist Jane Bennett
U118 Fireship under the Bridge
oil on canvas 2003 61 x 91cm
Available for sale

Painting the Fireship was a chance to give a virtuoso display of layers of translucent glazes of breathtakingly expensive and exotic colours such as Aureolin, Rose Madder and Alizarin Crimson. These aren't the sort of colours that usually get a work out during plein air painting.
However, as I started to paint lost trades and dying industries, I would get more and more frequent opportunities to use them. Subjects like the Oxycutter at William Wallbank and Sons, or the Blacksmiths at the Eveleigh Railway Workshops provided further connections to the lost world of the Early Industrial Revolution that Turner and his predecessors de Loutherbourg and Joseph Wright of Derby immortalized. The major difference is that these artists were painting the founding of this era - I'm painting its demise.

Related Posts


Vivid

Meltdown, Oxycutting at William Wallbank and Sons

Irons in the fire

Friday 26 June 2020

Royal Edward Victualling Yards (REVY), Darling Island, Pyrmont

Today's painting on the deck shows a small panorama of Sydney Harbour with a cargo ship berthed at the East Darling Harbour Wharves in the background. The strange looking building in the centre surrounded by piles of timber is the REVY C building on Darling Island. I painted it in the early 1990s from Ways Terrace.
Plein air oil painting of East Darling Harbour Wharves, Sydney Harbour and REVY, Darling Island in Pyrmont  painted by industrial heritage artist Jane Bennett







 
 
 
P8'REVY C from Ways Terrace'
1992 oil on canvas 31 x 61cm
On Darling Island, nothing is now left of the timber and shipbuilding yards. Today the water’s edge bristles with new apartment blocks gazing over sheltered waters. Yet beneath the silvery surface lies a hidden history.
The Royal Edward Victualling Yard, ( REVY A,B & C), was built between 1890 and 1911, by the revered Government architect Walter Liberty Vernon in the Federation Free style.
They were some of the last working buildings on the Pyrmont waterfront and had rivettingly odd architecture. Revy A and B  consisted of a 5 storey and a 6 storey pair of large red brick warehouses set at right angles to each other and linked by a square central  water reservoir tower. They were built in a flamboyant neo-Gothic style which reminded me irresistibly of the Bargello in Florence.
Plein air oil painting of East Darling Harbour Wharves, Sydney Harbour and REVY, Darling Island in Pyrmont  painted by industrial heritage artist Jane Bennett

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
P8'REVY C from Ways Terrace'
1992 oil on canvas 31 x 61cm
Revy C is a narrow, skinny, rather ungainly eight-storey, red brick Federation Warehouse, and still the tallest structure on Darling Island.  It had a rusticated ashlar bluestone ground floor, and a riveted truss jib crane facing Jones Bay Wharf. Its 4 large lift towers on the roof always reminded me of the crenellations on top of medieval castles.
Early fire fighting relied on steam pumped water pressure which could only reach up to a maximum of 2 storeys. So the set of external steel fire stairs at either end were a very practical solution to this problem, even though I used to curse them for being a perspective nightmare to paint.
Plein air oil painting of East Darling Harbour Wharves, Sydney Harbour and REVY, Darling Island in Pyrmont  painted by industrial heritage artist Jane Bennett


 







 
P12B REVY 3 from Jones Bay Wharf with 'Nederburg'
1990 oil on canvas 25 x 51 cm
SOLD
Enquiries about other paintings of Darling Island

Revy's original purpose became obsolete due to the increasing size of cargo ships and the introduction of container shipping.
The painting above shows the 'Nederburg' one of the last cargo ships docking at the Pier 19/20/21 (now known as Jones Bay Wharf) opposite Revy C.
During the 1980s REVY C was remodelled for the Defence Science and Technology Organization.
Plein air oil painting of East Darling Harbour Wharves, Sydney Harbour and REVY, Darling Island in Pyrmont  painted by industrial heritage artist Jane Bennett














P12 REVY from Jones Bay Road
1990 oil on paper 25.5 x 31 cm

Available for sale
This small oil study shows the timber yard on the other side to the previous painting.
In 1994, REVY A and B were renovated for Naval Support Command , and I was commissioned to paint 3 huge paintings for their foyer.
They could be seen from Jones Bay Road until 2005 when Channel 7 moved in. Now these paintings are on Spectacle Island, where unfortunately they can't be seen by the public.
REVY C was vacant from 2005 until its recent redevelopment for apartments.
 
Related Posts 
 
 
 

Tuesday 16 June 2020

Isolation Gallery on the deck - Ex HMAS Adelaide on Glebe Island

Due to the Covid-19 restrictions, my wings have been clipped.
I'm caring for my elderly and very frail mum at home, so even when restrictions are relaxed, my obligations as a carer mean I'll still be very restricted in the amount of plein air painting I can do.

Oil paintings of 'ex HMAS Adelaide' painted en plein air at Glebe Island Wharf, by industrial heritage artist Jane Bennett
Paintings on the deck

I've used my enforced downtime to repair old paintings. When canvases are taken to exhibitions and handled a lot they can get scuffed at the edges.
I'd spent the start of the Covid season putting up a pergola over the front deck so it would be a nice breakfast nook. But it's been really useful as.a studio extension as it's sheltered from rain and all but the fiercest winds.
I started putting some large canvases out there to dry after repairs, just to get them out of my way so I don't trip over them.
Down the side of my garden is a walkway to the local park and I noticed a few people staring at the paintings. I did this for a few weeks, but when I didn't have anything on the easel for a couple of days they asked me to put some paintings back up.

Oil paintings of 'ex HMAS Adelaide' painted en plein air at Glebe Island Wharf, by industrial heritage artist Jane Bennett
A3 Ex HMAS Adelaide late afternoon panorama
2011 oil on canvas 61 x 183cm                            
A25 'ex HMAS Adelaide sinking'
2011 oil on canvas 25 x 51 cm


The galleries are shut, so I thought 'Why not? At least it gets them out of my studio'
Since then I've had a different painting every day on the deck gallery. Sometimes two if they have a connection to each other.
I choose at random - it's a chance to wander through my past.
Enjoy.

Oil painting of 'ex HMAS Adelaide' painted en plein air at Glebe Island Wharf, by industrial heritage artist Jane Bennett
A3 Ex HMAS Adelaide late afternoon panorama
 2011 oil on canvas 61 x 183cm









This is a sort of before and after pairing.
The Ex HMAS Adelaide on Glebe Island being stripped of most of her interior fittings before scuttling, and a small painting of her scuttling off Terrigal.

Oil paintings of 'ex HMAS Adelaide' painted en plein air being scuttled at Terrigal, by industrial heritage artist Jane Bennett
A25 'ex HMAS Adelaide sinking'
2011 oil on canvas 25 x 51 cm












See the posts about these paintings
"Two ships in dock"
"Ghost Ship Part 2" 
"Ghost Ship Part 1"