"Dalgety Terrace Millers Point"
2014 oil on canvas 46 x 61cm Collection : Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW Enquiries about similar paintings
The Harbour Control Tower looms ominously over the row of ramshackle terraces on the sandstone block wall of Dalgety Road.
Some of the houses sport protest banners :"Millers Point not 4 sale" "Our community is worth more than money"
Fortunately some of the banners were still there long enough for me to paint them, however, a few weeks afterwards the Housing NSW Millers Point Relocation Team had torn them down.
Housing NSW's Relocation Officers and their security and "cleansing" teams have been removing banners and photos of residents throughout Millers Point. The banners on the Garrison Church Rectory and on St Brigid's Church were removed in January 2015.
"Dalgety Terrace Millers Point"
2014 oil on canvas 46 x 61cm Collection : Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW Enquiries about similar paintings
Luckily I finished painting this canvas just before the roadwork started.
I was set up between 2 of the hideous new apartments built several years ago to replace a set of old Maritime Services Board warehouses. |
"Dalgety Terrace Millers Point"
2014 oil on canvas 46 x 61cm Collection : Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW Enquiries about similar paintings
To add insult to injury,there is now a serious attempt to remove even the name "Millers Point" from the suburb- see Don't erase Millers Point Facebook Page
This canvas, which I exhibited in my solo exhibition "Under the Hammer" Frances Keevil Gallery 2014, was recently acquired for the collection of the Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW.
My canvases are banners that can never be torn down.
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About Me
- Jane Bennett Artist
- 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.
Tuesday 17 February 2015
Banners, Millers Point
Monday 8 December 2014
On location - A Short film of my paintings
This is the link to view a short film of me painting on location in Millers Point and talking about the paintings in my solo exhibition "Under the Hammer"
Short film of "Under the Hammer"
While I was painting some tiny quick studies of terrace houses in Argyle Place in October-November 2014, I was filmed by Lachlan Bennett (no relation!). In the film, I speak about industrial heritage, the de-industrialisation of the city and my latest solo exhibition, 'Under
the Hammer'.
It's impossible to convey the same sense of wonder and beauty that I experience while painting on location, but it's worth a try.
Short film of "Under the Hammer"
While I was painting some tiny quick studies of terrace houses in Argyle Place in October-November 2014, I was filmed by Lachlan Bennett (no relation!). In the film, I speak about industrial heritage, the de-industrialisation of the city and my latest solo exhibition, 'Under
the Hammer'.
It's impossible to convey the same sense of wonder and beauty that I experience while painting on location, but it's worth a try.
"36 Argyle Place" 2014 oil on canvas 15 x 10cm Available Enquiries : janecooperbennett@gmail.com |
As well as capturing me at work, Lachlan also visited the Frances Keevil Gallery to film an interview with me, and to view the paintings of Millers Point in the context of my previous work. Just before my solo exhibition opened, Lachlan visited High Street, Millers Point to film me painting the finishing touches on the large panorama of the Harbour Tower from High St.
Sunday 30 November 2014
Patina- Beautiful decay
GIHC16 'Detail Hammerhead Crane' 2014 oil on canvas 28 x 36cm SOLD PRIVATE COLLECTION : SYDNEY |
In my major solo exhibition "Under the Hammer" at the Frances Keevil Gallery there are several paintings of the Hammerhead Crane seen from various vantage points in the middle distance.
However, I also painted several canvases of close-up details that at first sight look like abstract works. I can assure you, they are completely realistic. They just focus on a tiny portion of the subject, unlike most of my work. These paintings have been wildly popular, but I wonder whether it is just because onlookers have become less capable of coping with the complexity of an entire scene, and are only able to appreciate a fragment.
GIHC18 'Girder, Hammerhead Crane 2014 oil on canvas 61 x 91cm FINALIST : 2015 HORNSBY ART PRIZE Enquiries |
Now I can't overstate how much I hate the flat picture plane!
And "modern" art has been all about "the surface", flatness and shallowness, in more ways than one.
In my paintings, I want depth, perspective and layers; physically, emotionally and intellectually.
So even in my canvases of close-up details, there are hidden depths and a sense of space extending beyond the picture plane, especially in the drawings and paintings I created while looking up, standing directly underneath the centre of the crane. I feel that the painting with the greatest sense of space and depth is "Under the Hammerhead Crane" seen below.
However these canvases of details of the Hammerhead Crane have given me the chance to reveal the transmutations, ambiguities and impermanence of form by the beauty of its decaying exterior.
GIHC20 'Under the Hammerhead Crane' 2014 oil on canvas 61 x 91cm Enquiries |
Patina is the visible sign of age on the surface of a material. It panders to our growing desire for the proof of authenticity; a backlash against the homogenized and generic corporate spaces that have taken over so much of our world. Materials are imbued with a history that speaks of ‘natural’ processes accrued over time, such as distressed wood, weather-beaten stone or brick, faded wallpaper, well-worn textiles, rusted ironwork, greening copper - the valued hallmarks of "shabby chic" in upmarket interior decor.
If you lose the texture, you lose your history.
The irony is that patina is seen as adding "authenticity", even though it has been caused by the degeneration and instability of the object.
I think of rust on a metal structure as though it is blood dripping from a wound.
Worship of patina can be seen as yet another symptom of the post-modern obsession with surface at the expense of ‘authentic’ depth.
Patina can be a by-product of the natural process of ageing, but it also functions as a memorial to disaster, natural or otherwise- the architectural equivalent of post-traumatic stress, showing the ‘wound’ inflicted by the trauma of the past as it reverberates down into the present.
Patina straddles the space and time between construction and ruin. The allure of patina lies in its instability; because any attempt to stabilise it affects the essential process.
The art critic Walter Benjamin said that the ‘real’ is only revealed in moments of ruination.
As with ruins, patina represents a fragment that suggests the meaning of the whole. Patina holds together contradictions, reveals historical depth, and yet ironically also remembrance and even healing.
Open from Tuesday 18th November – Sunday 7th December
Related posts
Ozymandias
Rust never sleeps : Painting the Hammerhead Crane Part 2
Painting the Hammerhead crane Part 1
Rust never sleeps : Painting the Hammerhead Crane Part 2
Painting the Hammerhead crane Part 1
Friday 28 November 2014
There goes the neighbourhood
MP9 'Millers Point, Barangaroo and the Harbour Tower from High st' oil on canvas 61 x 183cm 2014 Enquiries |
At first sight, it looks peaceful. Charming enough to put on the cover of a chocolate box.
Does it remind you of the Impressionists perhaps? Pissaro, even early Monet?
To the right is a charming row of Federation houses in dappled shade.
But there are undercurrents. All is not well.
There is a sharp sudden drop to the street below.
Behind a camouflaging line of trees there is turmoil. Machinery lurks in the background; inexplicable concrete structures and mounds of debris peek through.
A road carves through the centre to the horizon.
It divides the past from the future.
Welcome to Barangaroo.
MP9 'Millers Point, Barangaroo and the Harbour Tower from High st' oil on canvas 61 x 183cm 2014 Enquiries |
Millers Point always had a raffish edge. It was a tough little quarter, the oldest suburb in Australia, and coincidentally its earliest slum. For over 200 years it was the heart of maritime Sydney, as ships loaded wheat, wool and coal at the Fingerwharves that fringed the Harbour from Woolloomooloo to Blackwattle Bay.
Now it is undergoing a painful and cataclysmic metamorphosis. Every vestige of its colourful past will be swept away.
MP9 'Millers Point, Barangaroo and the Harbour Tower from High st' oil on canvas 61 x 183cm 2014 Enquiries |
Including the people.
The artist painting MP9 'Millers Point, Barangaroo and the Harbour Tower from High st' oil on canvas 61 x 183cm 2014 Enquiries |
Social cleansing is not a new policy dating from our own era of economic rationalism. It’s been here before.
In January 1900, the bubonic plague first broke out in Sydney, carried by rats from the ships. Millers Point was popularly considered to be a festering slum, inhabited by social undesirables living in ignorance poverty and filth. This was all the excuse the government needed for a massive program of slum clearance that went well beyond simple health precautions.
In January 1900, the bubonic plague first broke out in Sydney, carried by rats from the ships. Millers Point was popularly considered to be a festering slum, inhabited by social undesirables living in ignorance poverty and filth. This was all the excuse the government needed for a massive program of slum clearance that went well beyond simple health precautions.
Painting MP9 'Millers Point. Barangaroo and the Harbour Tower from High st' oil on canvas 61 x 183cm 2014 Enquiries |
This attitude permitted those with political or commercial interests at heart to promote resumption of property in the name of morality and hygiene. To “purge” the city of perceived social ills, whole city blocks were cordoned off, many houses and even whole streets were demolished.The entire waterfront was put in lockdown until it resembled a quarantined war-zone.
The idea of a “tabula rasa” – a clean sheet, a blank canvas, has always been very seductive to planners. Development through decay, dereliction then destruction is the familiar theme running through Sydney’s history.
Throughout the plague and clearances, yellow ribbons were tied to the doors of houses with infected people inside, or on the doors of houses due for demolition, to mark danger.
The idea of a “tabula rasa” – a clean sheet, a blank canvas, has always been very seductive to planners. Development through decay, dereliction then destruction is the familiar theme running through Sydney’s history.
Throughout the plague and clearances, yellow ribbons were tied to the doors of houses with infected people inside, or on the doors of houses due for demolition, to mark danger.
Painting MP9 'Millers Point, Barangaroo and the Harbour Tower from High st' oil on canvas 61 x 183cm 2014 Enquiries |
One hundred years later, the area was yet again in danger. It only escaped complete demolition due to the heated campaign by activists, residents and the Green Bans imposed by Jack Mundey and the NSW Builders' Labourers Federation.
As the maritime industry declined and was forced to the periphery of Sydney, the wharves were given a makeover to become upmarket apartments and an entertainment precinct. In 1985 ownership of public housing was removed from the Maritime Services Board and taken over by the Department of Housing. Yet a tiny enclave of the old working-class Sydney community still exists.
The phrase “spirit of place” is often overused, but how else can you describe it? People whose families had worked on the wharves, in some cases over 5 generations, are still clinging there precariously, in the houses they had lived in all their lives.
Sunset, Millers Point. MP9 'Millers Point Barangaroo and the Harbour Tower from High st' oil on canvas 61 x 183cm 2014 with another half finished panorama of the same size of High Street and Barangaroo on my easel. Enquiries |
There has been extraordinary pressure exerted to gentrify the area. A six-star hotel and high-rollers casino are planned for Barangaroo, only a stone’s throw away.
The first auctions of 293 public housing properties at Millers Point and The Rocks have begun. Ironically this will even include the Sirius apartment complex, which had been specifically built to house residents displaced during the previous development push.
There is no guarantee the proceeds will be quarantined from general revenue to build new public housing in the area or even close to the CBD.
Millers Point residents will have to go within two years, coincidentally when Barangaroo will open.
The first auctions of 293 public housing properties at Millers Point and The Rocks have begun. Ironically this will even include the Sirius apartment complex, which had been specifically built to house residents displaced during the previous development push.
There is no guarantee the proceeds will be quarantined from general revenue to build new public housing in the area or even close to the CBD.
Millers Point residents will have to go within two years, coincidentally when Barangaroo will open.
Close up detail of gate with yellow ribbon on house in High Street MP9 'Millers Point Barangaroo and the Harbour Tower from High st' oil on canvas 61 x 183cm 2014 Enquiries |
The yellow ribbons are back, tied to the doors and gates, to warn of an old danger in a new form.
Plus ça change, plus ça meme chose.
Painting MP9 'Millers Point, Barangaroo and the Harbour Tower from High st' oil on canvas 61 x 183cm 2014 Enquiries |
If you look carefully, their paintings are full of clues. Those elegant Parisian boulevardes painted by Caillebotte, are wounds inflicted on the city when small laneways were bulldozed, and the residents evicted.
Montmarte, too steep for easy access, escaped this homogenization, and was still full of crooked narrow lanes and cheap housing. Many fled there, including some impoverished artists who later became the world famous icons of Impressionist art.
Their paintings don’t look so “chocolate box” now, do they?
Close up detail showing the partly obscured "Barangaroo" sign MP9 'Millers Point Barangaroo and the Harbour Tower from High st'
oil on canvas 61 x 183cm 2014 |
But the letters are partially obscured; all you can make out is “a n g ...r”.
Hidden anger? With a sugar coating.
Related articles
- Another city landmark gets the brush-off March 31, 2014 Written by Nicole Hasham State Politics reporter Sydney Morning Herald
- Millers Point Three Years On Author : Vanessa Berry Her blog : Mirror Sydney
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