Palimpsest- Painting the abandoned Dunlop-Slazenger Factory

A palimpsest is a manuscript or piece of writing material on which later writing has been superimposed on effaced earlier writing.

The word is also used for something worked upon for one purpose and later reused or altered but still bearing visible traces of its earlier form.

I've recently been painting both inside and outside the abandoned Dunlop-Slazenger factory in Alexandria.

It has been abandoned for about 25 years, and has innumerable layers of graffiti ranging from the sublimely talented to the ridiculously inept.

Painting "Yellow Eye" oil on canvas 75 x 100cm
in the abandoned Dunlop-Slazenger factory

 

The walls of the abandoned Dunlop-Slazenger Factory are a palimpsest - a fascinating mix of both creation and destruction.

Painting "Yellow Eye" oil on canvas 75 x 100cm
in the abandoned Dunlop-Slazenger factory

29-04-15 Starting my first canvas of the Dunlop-Slazenger factory. I don't know what the image is of or what it's called, so I've christened it "Yellow Eye".

Painting "Yellow Eye" oil on canvas 75 x 100cm
in the abandoned Dunlop-Slazenger factory

 

It's an insight into the way different generations alter the landscape of their ancestors.

Painting "Yellow Eye" oil on canvas 75 x 100cm
in the abandoned Dunlop-Slazenger factory

 The factory is full of ghosts.

Painting "Yellow Eye" oil on canvas 75 x 100cm
in the abandoned Dunlop-Slazenger factory

On the second day of painting this canvas, I changed the composition to include the bizarre cartoon characters on the upper walls.

There is a grotesque creature which is part baboon part wildebeast and part crocodile with wriggling worm-like hair, and two characters resembling demonic smurfs.

The glass has also been tagged, and the rays of the setting sun make it light up like the stained glass of Chartres cathedral.

Painting "Yellow Eye" oil on canvas 75 x 100cm
in the abandoned Dunlop-Slazenger factory

 

 

The building is now being sand-blasted back to the original brick and will be redeveloped for apartments.

Painting "Yellow Eye" oil on canvas 75 x 100cm
in the abandoned Dunlop-Slazenger factory

 

 

Such is progress, alas.

Painting "Yellow Eye" oil on canvas 75 x 100cm
in the abandoned Dunlop-Slazenger factory

 

 

My extremely fashionable painting outfit. Lady Gaga will be copying this soon!

Painting "Yellow Eye" oil on canvas 75 x 100cm
in the abandoned Dunlop-Slazenger factory

 

 

Painting in PPE (Personal protective equipment)

DS3 'Greeblies' -
Abandoned Dunlop-Slazenger factory'
2015 oil on canvas 122 x 122cm

 

 

Available for sale 

 

Related posts

Illuminated manuscripts and stained glass windows- Painting the Dunlop - Slazenger factory Part 2

Banners, Millers Point

 "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.

Related posts

'From the Hungry Mile to Barangaroo'

There goes the neighbourhood

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.

"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.

Related articles

• Patina- Beautiful decay
• There goes the neighbourhood
• Why the hullaballoo about Barangaroo?

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.

Under the Hammer
Exhibition dates: 

Open from Tuesday 18th November –  Sunday 7th December

Related posts

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Under the Hammer

Hammerhead Crane

Ozymandias

Rust never sleeps : Painting the Hammerhead Crane Part 2


Painting the Hammerhead crane Part 1