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

Pyrmont Sandstone - Rock On !

My painting of a partly demolished Pyrmont warehouse is a finalist in the 2012 NSW Parliament Plein Air Painting Prize.

This Exhibition will be held:

Tue 1 May - Thu 31 May 2012

NSW Parliament, Macquarie Street Sydney 8.30 AM - 5.45 PM

 

'Industrial Cathedral, the Cooperage, C.S.R. Refinery'

oil on canvas 91 x 61cm

Enquiries about this painting:

FINALIST : Plein Air Painting Prize 2012

This canvas is of a sandstone escarpment seen through the screen of rotting timber beams that once were part of the Cooperage building in the CSR Refinery.

This painting focuses on the mysterious patterns of shadow made by the fall of light. The cavernous space and rows of columns reminded me of the interiors of cathedrals and ruined abbeys.

The wall at the back was the famous butter-yellow Pyrmont sandstone, which has been quarried to decorate the best loved historic Sydney buildings such as the Australian Museum, the Sydney GPO, the University of Sydney.

At sunset the sandstone rock face caught the last rays of light and the derelict warehouse was transformed.

This painting has come full circle. Out of Pyrmont into an Eastern suburbs gallery, back to Pyrmont as part of the 2011 Pyrmont Festival, then to Macquarie St as a finalist in the NSW Parliament Plein Air Painting Prize.

Oddly enough the sandstone wall shown at the back of the painting has made a similar journey as the painting. Some of it has made a triumphant visit to Macquarie Street's heritage showcase of 19th century architecture.

After being sliced and diced like a huge block of cheese by LendLease during the excavation for the McCaffrey's apartments in Jacksons Landing, it then suffered a few years in ignominious limbo, in a stockpiled pyramid under the no-man's land under the Anzac Bridge .

Ironically it came from the former "Paradise Quarry" so it should have been spared limbo.

Now these blocks are having a glorious afterlife being lovingly reshaped by master stonemasons in the Alexandria yards, to adorn the classic façades of Sydney's most beautiful buildings.

Some appropriate graffiti from one of the onsite port-a-loos during the re-opening of the quarry - "Sandstone Rocks!"

Totally.

 

 

U230 'Gargoyle, University of Sydney' 2009

oil on board 25 x 20cm

Enquiries about this painting

This alarming little creature is one of the refurbished gargoyles hanging off one of the spires of the University of Sydney. He was carved from the sandstone extracted from the Jacksons Landing excavations, possibly even from the escarpment I painted in the background of "Industrial Cathedral".

The MacLaurin Hall is an important piece of heritage of the University Quadrangle Building. Designed by the Government Architect of the day Walter Liberty Vernon it was constructed in 1911 as the Fisher Library ,which was later relocated in 1963.

In October 2007, the University began conservation work on the façade of MacLaurin Hall. This included work on the sandstone walls, bosses, windows and gargoyles. They were treated with a poultice to remove salt; the poultice was left on for 10 days or until it fell off, and then re-applied to ensure the salt was removed.

Before this treatment, some of the gargoyles had shown signs of splitting and falling. As the original gargoyles crumbled they therefore had to be replaced or extensively refurbished so that they wouldn't fall on people's heads from a great height.

Imagine one of those landing on your head!

Must be one of those Legendary "drop bears".

Related posts

Terminus Redux

To the Point
Wrong side of the tracks - Darling Island Bond and Free
Pretty vacant 
My Pyrmont page in this blog

A Tale of two hotels - the Terminus and the Point

The bad twin of Pyrmont Street

Pyrmont Paintings past and present

Pyrmont sandstone - The Lizards of Oz

I used to think that in Sydney, sandstone was as common as dirt.
Sydney is to me, not the emerald city or the Harbour city, but a golden city - the sandstone city. Sandstone seems to be everywhere -from sand and rocks on the beaches to the glorious escarpments revealed by cuttings for expressways. But most of this apparent abundance is commercially useless and the rest is fit only for fill or crazy paving at best.
The only sandstone of sufficient quality and durability to be used to restore or replace the exquisite carvings of Sydney's iconic 19th century architectural heritage such as the Queen Victoria building, the buildings on Macquarie St, or the University of Sydney is Pyrmont yellowblock.
Sandstone is a sedimentary rock consisting mostly of quartz or a mix of quartz and feldspar sands, in conjunction with materials such as calcite, clay, iron oxides, and silica which cement it together. It takes on the color of its components, most commonly tan to yellowish or tinted pink to dark red due to varying levels of iron oxide.
There are a lot of variations of texture and color, not many of which are suitable for commercial use. Common forms of sandstone include arkose which has a high feldspar content, graywacke which contains angular rock fragments, and conglomerate which contains rounded rock fragments. Other common stones included in this category are bluestone- a hard, dense feldspathic sandstone; brownstone- a reddish-brown stone taking its color from its high iron content;and flagstone- a sandstone or sandy slate that is easily split into large, thin slabs.
The spine of the Pyrmont peninsula is a sandstone ridge, still visible at Pyrmont Point despite reshaping by deforestation, quarrying, land reclamation and subsequent industrialization and de-industrialization. Pyrmont's topography was dramatically altered as the quarrymasters cut vast swathes through its famous yellowblock, stripping it bare to make the rest of Sydney beautiful.


" Ways Terrace, Pyrmont"
1994 oil on board 41 x 122cm
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Often the demolition madness that engulfed the peninsula throughout the 1990s would have the unexpected bonus of revealing the hidden beauty beneath the surface.
In 1989 the gardens planted by local residents in the James Watkinson Reserve in front of Ways Terrace were demolished and left derelict. The 2 dead trees on the hill were a notorious landmark for over a decade. The hole became a pond with many waterfowl, so possibly it was the site of the original Pyrmont spring.
When LendLease started the demolition of the CSR Distillery for the Jackson's Landing development, McCaffery's stables were excavated and revived as a premium source of sandstone.
It was cut like giant blocks of cheese and stored under the newly built Anzac Bridge before being sculpted to restore heritage projects on historic buildings all over Sydney.

"Pyrmont - McCaffery's Hill -Demolition of CSR Distillery "
2000 oil on canvas 61 x 46 cm
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This painting shows the site of the old "Paradise Quarry" , renowned as the source of the best Pyrmont yellowblock sandstone during the 19th century.
The "paradise stone" was a warm honey-yellow to brown colour but was dense fine-grained and comparatively difficult to work compared to the stone from the other 2 quarries, "Purgatory" and "Hellhole".
After the quarries closed in the late 19th century, the McCaffrey's stables were built there by the CSR to stable the horses that transported the sugar and rum from the refinery and distillery. Later the stables were used to house the brilliant green sugar trucks which had replaced the horses and carts.


" Sandstone under the Anzac Bridge" 1998
oil on canvas 41 x 61cm
Enquiries 
After these blocks of sandstone had been quarried at McCaffrey's Stables, they were then sent to cool their heels for a while under the Anzac Bridge, where the dragon boats are now stored.
Later these blocks were sent to the stone masons trained by the master mason George Proudman under the Centenary Stoneworks Programme. Eventually this sandstone was used to restore heritage items such as the gargoyles of the University of Sydney.
Pyrmont’s sandstone has decorated the best loved historic Sydney buildings such as the Australian Museum, the Sydney Post Office, the Lands Department and the University of Sydney. These intricate swirls of foliage writhe around the top of the columns of the western entrance of Sydney Technical College in Ultimo.


P258 'Capital of Sydney Technical College'
2012 oil on canvas 20 x 20cm

Enquiries

The Sydney Technical College building, which is part of the main campus of Sydney Institute of TAFE (Technical and Further Education), is on Mary Ann Street at the southern end of Bulwara Road in Ultimo, although the street address is given as 651-731 Harris Street. Built in 1891, it was designed by William Kemp in the Federation Romanesque architectural style. I call it Glebe Gothic.


P259 'Capital of Sydney Technical College' 2012
oil on canvas 20 x 20cm
Enquiries 

The heavily ornate brick and terracocotta construction is adorned with bizarrely incongruous Australian ornamental plants and animals such as waratahs, kangaroos, wombats, echidnas, platypuses and lizards.
They were created by the master sculptor of the Lands Department building, William Priestly Macintosh.
There is a similar outburst of patriotism with the sculptors of the gargoyles and grotesques of the University of Sydney. Some Australian fauna can be adapted into truly frightening gargoyles and it's a pity that their forms were unknown to the master craftsmen of Cluny. One of the bug-eyed twitchy kangaroos with bared claws poised to hurtle off the roof of the Quadrangle is known fondly by the students as "Skippy on a 3 day meth binge".

'The Lizards of oz-

Sydney Technical College, Ultimo Tafe' 2012

oil on board 20 x 40cm
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Lizards do enjoy soaking up the warmth, and the golden sandstone attracts the few feeble rays of sun that have been available this wet summer.
These goannas have picked a precarious but attractive perch to catch up on their tans while stalking the hapless marsupials and monotremes that cling to the arches below. The platypus seems unaware but the possum looks very alarmed and turns to hiss in anger.
The sculptor has done a wonderful job of reproducing the scaliness of their skins, and even the slight greying discolouration of the sandstone on their backs helps add to the illusion of reptilian flesh.

Related posts

Terminus Redux

To the Point
Wrong side of the tracks - Darling Island Bond and Free
Pretty vacant 
My Pyrmont page in this blog

A Tale of two hotels - the Terminus and the Point

The bad twin of Pyrmont Street

Pyrmont Paintings past and present 

Looking over the overlooked-Urban decay in Pyrmont

"Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others." — Jonathan Swift

The next Pyrmont Festival of Food Wine and Art will be held 11am - 5pm on Sunday 20th May at Pirrama Park, the old Water Police site.
I will exhibit a selection of my Pyrmont canvases painted from the early 1980s - 2012. Pyrmont has changed beyond recognition from the early 1980s, from an almost deserted industrial ghost town to a media, retail and entertainment hub.
I painted 'en plein air' and was 'Artist in Residence' at many locations including Pyrmont Power Station, the CSR Refinery and Distillery, Pyrmont Goods Yard, the Waterpolice site, Jones Bay Wharf, Union Square and the top of the half completed Anzac Bridge. Most of my paintings were created on sites that were off-limits to the public.
However, sometimes I set up my easel by the side of the road - or even right in the middle of the road. There were few passers-by and almost no traffic. I have returned to paint scenes that I last painted a couple of decades ago to compare and contrast the past with the present.
On Harris Street a handful of derelict buildings still rub shoulders with the clean sharp angles and acidic colours of Jacksons Landing.
The "Terminus Hotel" on the western corner of Harris and John Street has become a pin-up for lovers of urban decay.
Its burnt sienna brickwork and emerald green doors mock the tastefully muted hues and expensive renovations of the up market "Point Hotel" on the other side of the road. This vine encrusted ex-pub proudly flaunts an air of seedy glamour, and stories about its scurrilous past and its mysterious closure have become part of the local mythology. It is going to hell in the proverbial handbasket and doesn't care who knows it.

'Old bakery corner of John and Harris St' 2012
oil on board 35 x 28cm.
Enquiries
However the opposite corner of Harris and John Street has an equally haunting ruin which has been gently mouldering away for at least as long as its more spectacular neighbour.
This building on the corner of Harris and John Street was once a bakery, and then a typical Greek milk bar. The proprietors used to make their own icecream in the traditional way - twirling it around on a stick.
They had one of those old-fashioned football machines operated by a handle, with rows of wooden "players" kicking a ball. It would have pre-dated the pinball machines by at least a decade.
I have painted in Pyrmont and Ultimo for over 30 years now, but I don't actually remember when this ceased to be a thriving business.
If it ever really thrived.

"Pyrmont streetscape : Anzac Bridge from the corner

of John, Pyrmont and Point streets" 1994

oil on canvas paper 100 x 75cm
Enquiries 

ANZAC Bridge from John st 1994 oil 91x31cm

PRIVATE COLLECTION SYDNEY
SOLD
Enquiries  

Next door to the ex-milkbar is "Chicks on Harris" ("chicks" in this context refers to fast food- I'm not sure that the owners thought through the implications of their name as a number of establishments in this area in the past have had chequered reputations).

Black Dog (old bakery from John St)' 2012
oil on board 31 x 25cm
Enquiries 

The old milkbar had already been boarded up for some time, as there were archaeologically interesting layers of tatty posters layered on top of the boards which sealed the doors - a tradition that has continued to this day.

Related posts

Terminus Redux

To the Point
Wrong side of the tracks - Darling Island Bond and Free
Pretty vacant 
My Pyrmont page in this blog

A Tale of two hotels - the Terminus and the Point

The bad twin of Pyrmont Street

Pyrmont Paintings past and present

Brewer's Droop - Painting the Carleton United Brewery, Chippendale

The southern edge of the Sydney CBD, adjacent to Central railway station incorporating Broadway and Chippendale, was dominated by a walled off 'Empire of Beer' for over 170 years.

Kent Brewery was built by John Tooth and Charles Newnham in 1835. It exploited the fresh water from nearby Blackwattle Creek. However, Blackwattle Creek didn't stay fresh for long, and soon the surrounding area was a notorious slum.

The unregulated and noxious local industries included the Swamp Abattoirs across Parramatta Road in Ultimo, which provided the Char House of the Colonial Sugar Refinery with bones to burn to produce charcoal for filtering sugar.

CH4 Pub with no beer- Carleton United Brewery 2
2009 oil on canvas 75 x 100cm
Available

When bubonic plague hit waterside Sydney in the first decade of the 20th century, the authorities embarked on a program of slum clearances and 350 Chippendale houses were resumed by 1911.

Tooth's brewery site moved into the vacuum, extending their empire of beer more than 6 acres into the surrounding residential areas. Tooth's owned the western side of Kensington Street, and demolished properties  to construct new brewery buildings, as well as a wall to exclude the public. Yet another wall was built on the northern side of Wellington Street.

You can see this wall running behind the Irving Street Brewery boiler house in the painting above, which was painted during the demolition craziness not long after the property had been bought by Frasers Property for redevelopment.

Tooth’s Irving Street Brewery was built in 1912, and covered most of the land between Carlton and Balfour Streets.

CH3 Pub with no beer- Carleton United Brewery
2009 oil on canvas 100 x 75cm
Available

This iconic Sydney landmark is an 180 ft high octagonal brick tapering structure with metal strapping with cracked coping. Brick buttresses transfer the structure to a square base. 

The Irving Street Brewing Tower ceased its brewing operation in 1979, as it was superseded by the New Brewhouse.

It was one of the earliest and most prominent chimney stacks built in the CBD, and one of the last remaining in inner Sydney.

In the 1980s, a large redevelopment saw the demolition of all but one of the original Kent Brewery buildings. and Carlton and Uniting Breweries purchased it.

Until 1983 there were 1000 personnel at the brewery including lab staff, engineers, plumbers, fitters and turners, coppersmiths, blacksmiths, coopers, trades assistants, storemen, drivers and security.

In 1983 Tooth and Co were taken over by the Adelaide Steamship Company and the brewing assets were sold to Carlton and United Breweries and in 2003 the brewery closed forever.

Frasers Property bought the 5.8 hectare site in 2007 and embarked on a wildly ambitious $2 billion urban renewal project. It incorporates mixed use development including high density apartments,student accommodation in Kensington and Abercrombie Streets, a shopping centre, office blocks, and the old Brewery will be turned into a boutique hotel.

In my paintings you can see how the Irving Street Brewery building resembled a ruined castle on an island in the middle of a moat. It was a dreadfully boggy site after all the other buildings were clear felled around it and therre was a perpetual pool of water surrounding the old brewery.

Some heritage features have been selectively kept in the mix. Run down terraces in Kensington Street have become "Spice Alley", a funky "Eat Street", the sandstone gateway has been kept and the Irving Street Brewery building has now been adaptively reused as a community facility while also housing the site’s sustainable features including the tri generation plant providing the power, heating and cooling.

Chippendale, once an embarrassing slum, is now the fashionable hipster enclave known as Central Park.

Related posts

Barangaroo-Red Square, the Drill Rig and a little Archaeology

My page of Urban Landscape paintings

Both sides of the Street- My exhibition at St Vincents

UPtown Festival 2011

The 30th Pyrmont Ultimo Festival
Saturday 19th March 2011

The Pyrmont- Ultimo UPtown Festival 2011

Photo is courtesy of Jeffrey Mellefont,

Australian National Maritime Museum.

Quarry Green is a charming little park between Quarry St and Bulwara Road behind Harris St Ultimo. Its most famous landmarks are the church and tne pub, which lie close to the border between Pyrmont and Ultimo.
The festival began modestly thirty years ago, when it was started by two enterprising local residents, Debra Berryman and Olga Reader, as a simple get-together to unite the small local community. Since then, year by year, the UPTown Festival has witnessed the Ultimo Pyrmont precinct’s remarkable re-birth and transformation from a quiet, post-industrial area in the early 1980’s, with a population of under 2000, to today’s thriving business, media and education centre, with a dynamic, multi-ethnic community of around 20,000.
I had displayed some of my many paintings of Pyrmont and Ultimo in previous UPtown festivals, but always inside the church hall which made them difficult to see. This time I was given a large tent and a prime position outside the local community's favourite watering hole, the Lord Wolseley. This delightful old pub, at the northern end of Quarry Green on Bulwara Road, is one of the narrowest in Sydney, but makes up for that in 'character'. Its interior boasts a bullet hole left in the pub mirror by Neddy Smith, who had rather shakily aimed at the bartender during the 1980's gangland wars. Those were the days!
Despite the heavy rain the festival drew a large crowd-the organizers estimated that there were over 4,000 people attending. I caught up with lots of people I hadn't seen for years and met many new residents who were interested to see what their suburb used to look like.The tent sheltered my 40 paintings and 2 large drawings, attached with cable ties to the 14 easels I had again borrowed from my long suffering mate John from the Australian Society of Marine Artists. Lots of people helped me lug the easels from the Mustard Seed Centre where they were stored.
The paintings in this photo are some of my more recent Pyrmont artworks. In the foreground is the "Carpentaria and the James Craig" from just outside Wharf 7, and above it are 2 views of Jacksons Landing from Glebe Island Wharf and a painting of Pyrmont from the East Darling Harbour Wharves.

For more information see My Pyrmont page in this blog

Related posts
Looking over the overlooked-Urban decay in Pyrmont
To the Point
Wrong side of the tracks - Darling Island Bond and Free

Pretty vacant

A Tale of two hotels - the Terminus and the Point

Pyrmont Paintings past and present
Paintings of Pink pubs - Painting the Jolly Frog Part 2 
Not the Writers Festival- Exhibition of Pyrmont Paintings by Jane Bennett at 2013 Pyrmont Festival
We like sheep - Waite and Bull Building 137 Pyrmont Street
Marine art exhibition at Australian National Maritime Museum
Pyrmont Sandstone - The Lizards of Oz