The triumph of the machines

In early April 2015 I was asked to paint some of the last manual port movements at the Patrick terminal in Port Botany.
Now the containers are still being unloaded by port workers, but automated straddle cranes stack the containers onto trucks, replacing many port workers.
I was permitted to paint and set up my easel a week before the April change-over.

Painting a panorama of Port Botany
31 x 153cm oil on canvas 2015
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My viewpoint was from a narrow balcony above a 2 storey gatehouse.

On the ground floor was the First Aid room, while on the top floor, port workers facing redundancy were receiving career advice.

Painting a panorama of Port Botany
31 x 153cm oil on canvas 2015
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From my vantage point I could see the yard being prepared for the new automated system.

Painting a panorama of Port Botany
31 x 153cm
oil on canvas 2015
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In the centre, concrete barriers were arranged in grids to separate the trucks from the construction.

To the right, the giant stacks of containers were removed, leaving an eerily empty yard.

Painting a panorama of Port Botany
31 x 153cm oil on canvas 2015
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To the left is the new observation tower, as yet unmanned, where the new Autostrads will be controlled by radar.

Painting a panorama of Port Botany
31 x 153cm oil on canvas 2015
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At night it looked desolate and lonely. 

As the new driverless vehicles are remotely controlled, there won't be the same requirement for lighting the yard.

Painting the giant straddle cranes  Port Botany
75 x 100cm oil on canvas 2015
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At the moment, the giant straddle cranes are still operating with drivers.

Painting the giant straddle cranes  Port Botany
75 x 100cm oil on canvas 2015
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One day the giant straddle cranes and even the trucks may become driverless.

Paintings of Port Botany
Left to right: the giant straddle cranes  Port Botany
75 x 100cm oil on canvas 2015
 giant straddle cranes  Port Botany
100 x 75cm oil on canvas 2015
Night panorama straddle cranes  Port Botany
31 x 153cm oil on canvas 2015
 Port Botany panorama 31 x 153cm oil on canvas 2015
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I know that it's all in the name of efficiency, but when I left, it looked like a ghost town.

Night,containers,  Port Botany 25 x 31cm oil on canvas 2015
Night, Port Botany panorama 20 x 40cm oil on canvas 2015
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As the last ship before the changeover was unloaded, a line formed of the old straddle cranes which were due to be scrapped soon after.

Night,containers, Port Botany

25 x 31cm oil on canvas 2015

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 Ominously, while I was painting in my temporary gatehouse studio, I had met some of the same people both delivering and receiving career advice 7 years earlier when the East Darling Harbour Wharves  closed down to become Barangaroo.

PB2 'Anatoma, Port Botany' 2015 oil on canvas 28 x 36cm
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A few weeks after my stint as 'Artist in Residence' at Port Botany, some of the port workers who had received redundancy, were called back to work when some of the robots malfunctioned and dropped a few containers in the water!

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A last look at the Harbour Control Tower

Another one bites the dust

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Sydney's Patrick terminal goes automated, with fewer staff but dancing robots (smh.com.au)

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Open House

A not very architecturally distinguished housing commission in the hinterland of Glebe/Ultimo was being demolished in 2011. 
I jumped the fence and painted some small plein air canvases while it was being demolished.

 "Half demolished apartment block
in Cowper Street Glebe/Ultimo"
2011 oil on canvas 15 x 15cm
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The 'Mirragang' at first sight looks quite presentable, until the lack of glass in the windows hints at something not quite right....

'Open Plan'  -half demolished apartment block 

in Cowper Street Glebe/Ultimo"
2011 oil on canvas 13 x 18cm
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The shell of the 'Mirragang' apartments on the left, and the 'Mirrabooka' on the right, frame the handsome dark brick building in the centre.

This former wool bond store, the Farmers and Graziers No 2 Store, was the last of the great bond stores, and replaced a swath of houses in 1936. The low-lying swampy area of Glebe and Ultimo has always been known for cheap and often nasty housing.

 From the 1850s onwards, a jumble of workshops, slaughter yards, boiling-down works and other scrappy industries sprang up around the noxious waters of Blackwattle Creek. Cramped cottages without water or sewerage, were erected by landlords for the working poor. People lived cheek by jowl with domestic animals. Refuse and offal from the slaughter yards often remained to rot on the mudflats. The abattoirs provided the bones to be burnt in the Char Tower of the CSR Distillery, which were used to filter sugar. And all of the residue was pumped right back into the Blackwattle Creek.

However uninspired these redbrick tower blocks looked, they were a vast improvement on their predecessors.

Mind you, that wouldn't have been hard.

Almost anything would have been.

 'Open House' -
2011 oil on canvas 25 x 20cm
Available
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The patch of sky behind the half-demolished windows gives a feeling of a stage set.
These 15 public housing apartment blocks in Cowper Street, Glebe, were demolished by the state Labor government in 2011, resulting in the eviction of 130 tenants. Although new housing on the site was promised, to be funded by the proceeds of money raised by the sale of 99-year leases to Millers Point terraces, the land was left vacant for years as a development application was lodged and contested in court.
The O'Farrell cabinet approved construction plans for 153 public housing units, 95 affordable housing units and 247 private apartments on the site in 2013.

Now the Baird government has finally announced plans to rebuild this demolished public housing estate on Cowper Street as a mixed private, public and affordable housing community.

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Brewers droop

Vivid

I have an exhibition of paintings inspired by 'Vivid' now on display at the Four Seasons Hotel, 199 George Street, The Rocks, Sydney.

This hotel is almost 'Vivid Headquarters'.

It is only 100 metres from the best vantage points to view the spectacular lighting the sails of the Opera House, and the facade of the Museum of Contemporary Art.

'Vivid - Sydney Harbour Bridge  from Lavender Bay (Rainbow lights)' 2015 oil on canvas 102 x 200cm
SOLD
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Brett Whiteley often painted the magnificent view from Lavender Bay. 

It looks even better at night, however I don't think that many other artists have painted nocturnes of Sydney Harbour.

'Vivid - Lighting the Sails-Luna Park on the Opera House'

2015 oil on canvas 152 x 122cm

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Of all the images projected onto the sails of the Opera House, my favourite would be Luna Park.
It revives memories of the cheeky imagery by Martin Sharp, Peter Kingston and other larrikin ratbag artists who revered and helped defend Luna Park.

Painting inspired by Vivid festival hanging
in the Four Seasons Hotel in The Rocks Sydney -
From left to right :
'Vivid - Lighting the Sails-Luna Park on the Opera House'
2015 oil on canvas 152 x 122cm
'Fireship' oil on paper 136 x 112cm
'Fireship' oil on canvas 61 x 91cm

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The angle of the lighting on the painting has cast a faint rainbow as a halo above the span of the Bridge.

See more at the Ultimate Art Gallery
Four Seasons Hotel Sydney
199 George St, Sydney NSW 2000 Australia
P.O Box 1347, Crows Nest NSW 2065
Phone: +61 (4) 35 844 347
Email: info@ultimateart.com.au

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In the shadow of the Bridge - Night Observatory Hill

Painting the International Fleet Review Part 2

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 

 

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