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
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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
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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

Painting the icebreaker 'Polar Star'

Under the Hammer

Hammerhead Crane

Ozymandias

Rust never sleeps : Painting the Hammerhead Crane Part 2


Painting the Hammerhead crane Part 1

There goes the neighbourhood

MP9 'Millers Point, Barangaroo
and the Harbour Tower from High st'
oil on canvas 61 x 183cm 2014
Enquiries

In my new exhibition, "Under the Hammer"  at the Frances Keevil Gallery there is a large and pretty panoramic canvas of High Street.
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.

MP9 'Millers Point, Barangaroo
and the Harbour Tower from High st'
 oil on canvas 61 x 183cm 2014
Enquiries

Now it is undergoing a painful and cataclysmic metamorphosis. Every vestige of its colourful past will be swept away. 

 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. 

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.

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.

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
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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

Remember, when you admire the Impressionists, that they painted during the forced clearances of inner city Paris by the despotic town planner Baron Haussmann.
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

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To return to my painting, behind the trees is the sign of the Barangaroo development.
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

Pyrmont paintings past and present- My Exhibition in the Australian National Maritime Museum

Yesterday, today and tomorrow in Pyrmont.
I've been invited to exhibit a selection of 15 of my Pyrmont paintings in the members' lounge of the Australian National Maritime Museum.
This exhibition will still be on display throughout the annual Pyrmont festival in May, which culminates in a 2 day celebration of Art, Wine and Food in Pirrama Park, on the weekend of Saturday 17th and Sunday 18th May 2014.

My exhibition of Pyrmont paintings
in the members lounge of the

Australian National Maritime Museum

Enquiries about these paintings

My exhibition of Pyrmont paintings
in the members lounge of the
Australian National Maritime Museum
Enquiries about these paintings

As usual, I will be exhibiting my smaller canvases and paintings on wood panels at the Park itself, however this display in the members lounge has given me a wonderful opportunity to show work that is impossible to display outdoors in the festival, such as works on paper framed under glass.

My exhibition of Pyrmont paintings
in the members lounge of the
Australian National Maritime Museum
Enquiries about these paintings

My exhibition of Pyrmont paintings in the

members lounge of the

Australian National Maritime Museum

Enquiries about these paintings

This is a view of the exhibition from the most comfy sofa in the middle of the members lounge.

My exhibition of Pyrmont paintings
in the members lounge of the
Australian National Maritime Museum

My exhibition of Pyrmont paintings
in the members lounge of the
Australian National Maritime Museum

This quick sketch of the rooftops of the CSR Refinery and the Glebe Island swing bridge is hung behind the reception desk.

I drew this from the top of the CSR Boilerhouse several years before the Anzac Bridge was built.

P97B "Tumbledown cottage, 95 Pyrmont st (now demolished)"
1994 ink/paper 22 x 30 cm
P31 "Jones Bay Wharf, 1" 1997 ink/paper 30.5 x 40.5 cm
O21 "Pyrmont, looking west from Observatory Hill"
1989 gouache/paper 34 x 75 cm
Enquiries about these paintings

HCT13 "The 'Southern Cross' from the Harbour Control Tower 2007
gouache/paper 30 x 50 cm
Enquiries about these paintings
This is the most recent image of Pyrmont in this exhibition, although by now the wharf in the foreground has been completely demolished to make way for the controversial Barangaroo development.
My studio in the control room of the Harbour Tower gave me a 360 degree birds eye view of Sydney Harbour, so this is a very unfamiliar aspect of the Pyrmont peninsula.

P120 "Jones Bay Wharf" 2000 pastel/paper 76 x 56 cm
P90 "CSR Sunset" 1998 oil/canvas 61 x 91 cm
P91 "CSR Refinery" 1994 acrylic/paper 76 x 56 cm
Enquiries about these paintings

P90 "CSR Sunset" 1998 oil/canvas 61 x 91 cm
P91 "CSR Refinery" 1994 acrylic/paper 76 x 56 cm
Enquiries about these paintings
Two views of the CSR Refinery, which is now the Jackson's Landing development.

P80 "Pyrmont Power Station from Mill St 1"
1991 mixed media/paper 76 x 56 cm
P35 "Pyrmont Bond Stores
(‘Darling Island Bond and Free’ 12 Pyrmont st)"
1996 ink/paper 30.5 x 40.5 cm
Enquiries about these paintings
Two evocative ink and wash drawings are hung at the end corner of the room.
The glitzy Star Casino has now replaced the brooding ruins of the Pyrmont Power Station.
However, in contrast the bond store at no. 12 Pyrmont street, known as "Darling Island Bond and Free" has changed so little that I can't believe that nearly 2 decades has passed since I drew this moody ink and wash sketch.

P90 "CSR Sunset" 1998 oil/canvas 61 x 91 cm
P91 "CSR Refinery" 1994 acrylic/paper 76 x 56 cm
Enquiries about these paintings

HCT13 "The 'Southern Cross' from the Harbour Control Tower "
2007 gouache/paper 30 x 50 cm
P120 "Jones Bay Wharf" 2000 pastel/paper 76 x 56 cm
Enquiries about these paintings

P36 "Ways Terrace from Lower Jones Bay Road"
1993 ink/paper 31 x 41 cm
Enquiries about these paintings

P103 "From the roof of Pyrmont Power Station
1994 oil/canvas 92 x 122 cm

P214 "Sydney Harbour from the top of the

Pyrmont Power Station(building Star Casino)"

1997 oil/board 40 x 89 cm
Enquiries about these paintings
The red ship in the background is the notorious ‘Tampa’, painted several years before the refugee incident.

P97B "Tumbledown cottage, 95 Pyrmont st (now demolished)"
1994 ink/paper 22 x 30 cm
P31 "Jones Bay Wharf, 1" 1997 ink/paper 30.5 x 40.5 cm
Enquiries about these paintings

P92 "Industrial Cathedral 2" (‘Cooperage’, CSR Refinery)

1998 oil/canvas 92 x 61 cm

P97B "Tumbledown cottage, 95 Pyrmont st

(now demolished)" 1994 ink/paper 22 x 30 cm

P31 "Jones Bay Wharf, 1" 1997 ink/paper 30.5 x 40.5 cm
Enquiries about these paintings
An added bonus is that the Australian National Maritime Museum is very close to the sites where most of my paintings were created, so the viewers only have to step outside for a moment to grasp how much the landscape of the inner city suburb of Pyrmont has changed over the last 30 years.
Glimpses of Pyrmont's half forgotten industrial past can still be discerned through the manicured lawns and towers of high rise, but only if you know exactly what to look for.

Related posts

See interview at "Visit Pyrmont/Ultimo" website

2012 Classic and Wooden Boat Show- Australian National Maritime Museum

Wrong side of the tracks

If you enjoy my Pyrmont paintings please contact me or the Frances Keevil Gallery.

'From the Hungry Mile to Barangaroo'

My solo exhibition 'From the Hungry Mile to Barangaroo' will be held at the Frances Keevil Gallery until 24th March 2013.

'Goat Island from Moore's Wharf'

2013 oil on canvas 122 x 183cm Sold

The 'Hungry Mile''
2007 oil on canvas 100 x 122cm
Enquiries about these paintings
This exhibition will be the major event for Art Month, and will opened by Elizabeth Fortescue, Visual Arts Writer for The Daily Telegraph on Tuesday 5th March 2013, 6 – 8pm.

'Wharf 6/7' 1999 oil on canvas 61 x 101cm
'Harbour Control Tower from Moore's Wharf ' 
2013 oil on canvas 51 x 25cm  Sold

'L3' Crane, with the 'Taiko'

2006 oil on canvas 51 x 25cm

'Barangaroo from Glebe Island' 2010

oil on canvas 31 x 61 cm  Sold

'The empty wharf from shed 6' 2008

oil on canvas 31 x 61cm

'Interior, Wharf 8-9' 2000

oil on canvas 31 x 61cm

'Night, from bridge of 'Maersk Gateshead'

2009 oil on canvas 61 x 91cm

'The 'Southern Cross'

2007 oil on canvas 31 x 92cm Sold

Enquiries about these paintings

'Yellow cranes from the cage'

2007 oil on canvas 153 x 61cm Sold

'Capitaine Tasman' + 'Caledonie Express' night

2007 oil on canvas 31x103cm

'The last call of the 'Tampa'

2007 oil on canvas 31x103cm

'Forklifts in the fog panorama'

2007 oil on canvas 31x103cm

'The Pacific Dawn with demolition of Shed 6'

2008 oil on canvas 31x103cm

Enquiries about these paintings

The gallery was still hanging the exhibition when these photos were taken.

'The Last of the Hungry Mile' 2007 oil on canvas 180 x 122cm
FINALIST : 2008 SULMAN PRIZE, ART GALLERY OF NSW
'Walsh Bay Wharves, Moore's Wharf and the Hungry Mile'
2002 oil on canvas 122 x 152cm
'Relics from the 'Dead House' 2007 oil on canvas 122 x 100cm
Enquiries about these paintings

The paintings show the transition of the former wharf, East Darling Harbour, known as the "Hungry Mile", to the construction site, Barangaroo.

'Sydney Harbour Panorama from the Stamford on Kent'
2007 oil on canvas 25 x 153cm Sold

'Moore's Wharf from the bridge of 'Scholarship'

2007 oil on canvas 25 x 51cm Sold

Moore's Wharf, Sydney Harbour Bridge and Walsh Bay Wharves'

2007 oil on canvas 25 x 51cm Sold

'Wharf Skeleton' 2008 oil on canvas 75 x 100cm

'The wharves and High St from the Stamford on Kent'

2007 oil on canvas 75 x 100cm"

'The Last of the Hungry Mile' 2007 oil on canvas 180 x 122cm
FINALIST : 2008 SULMAN PRIZE, ART GALLERY OF NSW
Enquiries about these paintings

I've had a ring-side seat to paint this fascinating area, courtesy of many businesses and private individuals, who had to put up with having a self-appointed "Artist in Residence" paint from their offices, shops, cafes or homes.

'Harbour Control Tower from Moore's Wharf '

2013 oil on canvas 51 x 25cm Sold

'L3' Crane, with 'Taiko' 2006

oil on canvas 51 x 25cm

'The 'Charlotte ' passing Goat Island 2011

oil on canvas 15 x 18cm Sold 

'Goat Island from Moore's Wharf' 2010

oil on canvas 45 x 91 cm

'High Street from the wharf' 2007

oil on canvas 31 x 41cm

'Forklifts in the fog' 2007

oil on canvas 31 x 41cm

Enquiries about these paintings

I've been able to create large-scale plein air canvases in the middle of the Barangaroo demolition site, from the top of the Harbour Control Tower and in Moore's Wharf, the headquarters of the Sydney Ports Corporation Emergency Response Tugs and Pilot Boats.

'Sydney Harbour Panorama from the Stamford on Kent'
2007 oil on canvas 25 x 153cm Sold
Moore's Wharf from the bridge of the 'Scholarship'
2007 oil on canvas 25 x 51cm Sold
Moore's Wharf, Sydney Harbour Bridge and Walsh Bay Wharves'
2007 oil on canvas 25 x 51cm Sold
'Wharf Skeleton' 2008 oil on canvas 75 x 100cm

'The wharves and High St from Stamford on Kent'

2007 oil on canvas 75 x 100cm

Enquiries about these paintings
These are the last outposts of maritime and industrial activity, once so familiar around Sydney Harbour.

'Wharf Skeleton' 2008 oil on canvas 75 x 100cm

'The wharves and High St from the Stamford on Kent'

2007 oil on canvas 75 x 100cm

Enquiries about these paintings
 
See also my previous solo exhibition in 2011 at the Frances Keevil Gallery : "May Close without warning"

Related posts

The Mother Art is Architecture

Eaten by Robots

The Last of the Hungry Mile