Shadowboard

A shadow board is one of the most common options for tool storage found in amateur and professional workshops and sheds the world over. Its noble aim is to organize the workplace so that tools are near the work station where they are to be used.

Work in progress on the easel
E135A 'Shadowboard - No Brake' 2017
oil on metal panel 51 x 51cm
Available

Shadow boards have the outlines of a work station's tools marked on them, so operators can quickly identify which tools are in use or missing.

As well as providing easy access to tools,they are supposed to reduce time spent searching for the correct tool; to reduce losses due to carelessness, lack of proper maintenance or theft; to improve work station safety as tools are replaced safely after use, rather than becoming potential hazards; to reduce clutter; and to maximize the space available.

Work in progress on the easel
E135A 'Shadowboard - No Brake' 2017
oil on metal panel 51 x 51cm
Available

Well that was the Platonic ideal anyway.

The dream of imposing order on chaos is often cruelly exposed as exactly that - a dream, when reality kicks in.

How should a shadowboard be organized?

Sounds so easy and straightforward, but it reveals fundamental and often irreconcilable differences in temperament, age and level of expertise, and can be the source of perpetual bickering, even long-running feuds.

Work in progress on the easel
E135A 'Shadowboard - No Brake' 2017
oil on metal panel 51 x 51cm
Available

Should it be organized by type of tool (all spanners, screwdrivers etc grouped together), by size (aesthetically pleasing to have a hierarchy of tools descending by size, but not necessarily the most practical), by frequency of use (commonly used tools in the middle where they are easily removed or replaced) by ease of removal /replacement (large, awkwardly sized or heavy tools placed where people don't have to reach up or down for them) or by what is required for common tasks (a particular size of wrench/saw/hammer/screwdriver etc are often needed together for a task that crops up frequently).

Sometimes it can even be a passive-aggressive wish list, like a recent commercial for a hardware line of products where empty outlines were left for needed or desired tools, either in hope of a future financial windfall or thoughtful gift.

E135B'Shadowboard with 44 class diesel
-(Do not pull all way out) '
2017 oil on metal panel 51 x 51cm
Available

The usual result is a hotch potch of all the above.

Jumble of the useful, the once useful and now obsolete, the broken bits, the spare parts that 'may come in handy'; the lost, strayed and some frankly useless items that seem to breed unchecked in dark corners. When, if ever, were any of these used? Last week? Last century?

Work in progress on the easel
E135B'Shadowboard with 44 class diesel
-(Do not pull all way out) '
2017 oil on metal panel 51 x 51cm
Available

I used metal panels to paint on instead of my usual canvas, leaving the metal bare when the tool was shiny and well maintained, and only painting the non-metallic or rusty parts. The work above also includes a 44 class diesel lurking in the background.

The faded, naive lettering found on cryptic signs create abstract yet evocative grids of letters and word fragments, colour and text fading into meditative, elegiac compositions.

Other mysteries abound. As this is a workshop filled with tools and presumably people who know how to use them, why did someone bother to write "Do not pull all way out" on the drawers of the cabinet beneath, instead of fixing the drawer?

I'm no handyperson, but even I can fix drawers - it's fiddly but not that hard.

E135A 'Shadowboard - No Brake' 2017
oil on metal panel 51 x 51cm
Available

A massive Marie Kondo attack has been carried out in the Large Erecting Shop to tackle decades of clutter. Nothing to do with sparking joy.

Everything deemed not strictly necessary to the re-purposing of the Large Erecting Shop as a running shed is being given the old heave-ho - best case scenario sent to Thirlmere, worst case - the skip.

I was chased from one end of the shed to the other, as wherever I set up my easel, I seemed to get in the way. I was hunting for a quiet corner as the situation brought out crankiness in normally laid back people. I was incessantly asked "why I was painting this rubbish instead of the trains", but most of the trains will still exist somewhere, while this sort of subject, evoking the true spirit of the workshop, is ephemeral.

But fashions change as to what is deemed 'necessary' and unique and quirky items can be lost or destroyed in the rush to impose order on chaos..

In the Large Erecting Shop the shadowboards are no longer functional as no repair or maintenance will be carried out there.

Ghost boards with ghost signs for ghost trains.

They show the never to be filled outlines of lost tools for lost purposes.

Headstones of the workshop.

More paintings of the Eveleigh Railway Workshops

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The empty mask- Edwin Davey and Sons Flour Mill, Pyrmont

Built in 1896, the Edwin Davey and Sons Flour Mill was the last and one of the longest operating flour mills operating in inner Sydney.
The main building was a 4 storey brick flour mill in the utilitarian Federation Free Classical architectural style, with rectangular window openings and a corrugated iron roof behind a plain parapet.
The north facade had a large triangular pediment bearing the business name "Edwin Davey and Sons". On the western side, an extension built out to the cliff line. There was a rail siding from the old Metropolitan Goods Line on the northern side, below the escarpment with some remaining wheat elevation gear and corrugated iron clad extensions at the back of the mill.
By the time of these paintings from the early 2000s, the interior had long been gutted of any machinery and there are obvious horizontal bands of bracing girdling the exterior facade and keeping its last few bricks from falling onto the cars below.

P263A 'Edwin Davey Flour Mill'
2012 oil on board 26 x 38cm
Available
Until the 1860s the Ultimo end of the Pyrmont peninsula was still an undeveloped grazing property owned by Surgeon John Harris and his heirs.
In 1895, 10 lots of Block 42 of the Harris Estate was bought by Freeman and Sons, producers of a large range of household goods, who built a flour mill on the site.
In 1900 Edwin Davey, who already owned mills in South Australia, bought the Ultimo Roller Mills, to produce flour for export, as freight costs from Sydney were better than in Adelaide.

P100 Demolition of the Fielder Gillespie Flour Mills 2
1992 oil on paper 75 x 100cm
Available
The Ultimo Mill went into production in 1901 under the name Chanticleer Flour and operated until 1992, when it became part of Weston Milling Ltd. As the Ultimo mill was small and old fashioned, it was closed, gutted and sold for development.
By coincidence, about the same time, over the opposite side of Pyrmont Peninsula, Fielder Gillespie Flour Mills, next to the Pyrmont Power Station, was also being demolished. After a few weeks the Fielder Gillespie site was completely cleared and remained empty space until eventual redevelopment as a Woolworths and various other shops and offices. By contrast, the ghostly skeleton of the Edwin Davey and Sons building haunted the western edge of Pyrmont for a generation.


P263 'Edwin Davey Flour Mill'
2012 oil on paper 13 x 23cm
Available
By 2001 the building had been reduced to a wafer thin shell of bricks propped up in front of a weedy wasteland.
My painting above shows the interior of the facade, criss-crossed with bracing and scribbled over with cryptic graffiti.

The empty mask formerly known as the Edwin Davey and Sons flour mill was for almost 30 years a landmark for anyone driving to or from Pyrmont over the Anzac Bridge.It was demolished and replaced by an apartment block, with a small shed cantilevered on the western facade.

It lights up at night in a token gesture to the former building's existence.

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To the Point

Terminus Redux

I have mixed feelings about the renovation of the Terminus.
Although it's been restored,not demolished or replaced by apartment blocks as so often happens, it has been stripped of its poetry.

P286A 'Terminus Redux'
2017-8 ink, charcoal on paper 131 x 106cm
Enquiries : janecooperbennett@gmail.com
I painted a large mixed media work on paper, as well as an even larger oil on canvas, just before the iconic vines were removed. The awning had been stripped back to a fragile skeleton, but the bricks had yet to be sand-blasted.
However well a place is renovated, inevitably there must be compromises between keeping the original character and making it a viable business.
No expense was spared on the fitout.The designers and architects have done their best to restore the old pub building while retaining quite a lot of the original pub from tiles to timber. The pressed metal ceiling upstairs is a sympathetic replacement not the original, which was too badly damaged.

P286 'Terminus Redux'
2017-8 oil on canvas 122 x 183cm

Enquiries -janecooperbennett@gmail.com

I miss the vine-covered facade. It had probably been planted early in the 20th century by a CSR employee, as the same species of Virginia creeper covered the manager's residence and the courtyard of the 'Rum Store'.
Recently I attended the launch of Shirley Fitzgerald's wonderful book on the history of the Terminus. I was honoured that Shirley had asked me to contribute a photo of one of my paintings of the Terminus facing opposite its longtime companion and rival, the Pyrmont Point Hotel (aka the Royal Pacific).

P252 'The Terminus and the Point'
2011 oil on canvas 31 x 61cm
Private Collection : Sydney
Enquiries : janecooperbennett@gmail.com
When I went upstairs, I almost walked into one of the walls, not from one too many cocktails, but because I'd expected the hall that once led through to the building next door. I believe this passageway had to be closed off due to updated fire regulations.
A typical pub menu, priced rather steeply, cashes in on the hipster ambience from the 32 years that the Terminus spent as an icon of urban decay.
As a contrast, when I'd visited the Terminus prior to its closure in the early 1980s, they were giving out free food. Possibly this had contributed to its original decline and fall.
The new owners aren't making that mistake, quite the opposite.

Ironically despite having kept the ghost sign outside, no Resch's is on tap.

For more information about the Terminus and Pyrmont Point Hotels

see My Pyrmont page in this blog

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Ghost in the machine

I've been painting ghost signs in the Eveleigh Railway Workshops, as one by one, the relics of the past slowly vanish.

There are faded sepia warning signs so old that they are handwritten.
Fire extinguishers have kept a quiet vigil, like forgotten sentries post battle.

E119 'Ghost sign in the Large'
2017 oil on canvas 31 x 15cm

Enquiries 

So, what is the 'Ghost in the machine' ?
This phrase, so often used, yet little understood, was coined by the Oxford philosopher Gilbert Ryle to describe the Cartesian dualist account of the mind–body relationship.

One of the underlying assumptions within the famous maxim of the French 17th century philosopher René Descartes, 'Cogito ergo sum' ('I think, therefore I am') is  that the mind is not only distinct, but actually separable from the body.

E119A 'Ghost sign in the Large 2'
2017 oil on canvas 31 x 15cm

Enquiries 

According to the philosopher John Locke (1632–1704), a person is defined as ‘an intelligent being, having reason and reflection, which can consider itself in different times and places.’ By this definition, someone is defined as a person if they can think about themselves in the past, future, and conditional, and in a variety of different places. 
If a person has this quality of self-conscious recognition, what is the cause? Does consciousness reside in their body, their brain, or their ‘soul’? If that person has had a serious accident rendering them unconscious and without brain function -so that the body is still alive but the mind is no longer self-conscious nor could ever be again-Is the body still to be regarded as a person? If not, then how can the physical body alone be that which makes them a person?
If the Eveleigh Railway Workshops are emptied of most of their machines and other heritage items, how can they still be considered to be the Eveleigh Railway Workshops?

How much can be removed, before it becomes an empty shell?

When the contents of a container are removed, is it still a container?
What is a body without a mind or a soul?

More paintings of the Eveleigh Railway Workshops

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Terminus Indeterminate

Starting a new canvas of the 'Terminus Hotel',

2017 oil on canvas 56 x 76cm

Enquiries

The Terminus Hotel, corner of John and Harris St, Pyrmont is being renovated after over 20 years of not so benign neglect as part of the Wakil's collection of derelict inner city buildings.

The former poster child of urban decay has fallen to the inexorable tide of gentrification. It won't be totally obliterated as so many unfortunate heritage icons all over Sydney have been.

Starting a new canvas of the 'Terminus Hotel',

2017 oil on canvas 56 x 76cm

Available
Enquiries
Hopefully as much as possible of its quirky heritage will be retained, but at this stage it is difficult to predict the outcome, as so much depends on the personal taste of the developers, architects and designers.

Starting a new canvas of the 'Terminus Hotel',

2017 oil on canvas 56 x 76cm

Available

Enquiries

The cantilevered rusty steel awning has just been stripped down to a skeletal framework. It matches the bare branches of the tree on the corner of John and Harris St opposite the old bakery.
I don't know if the awning will be removed or restored.
Usually I paint the Terminus from the other side of Harris St, to pair it with its rival pub, the Pyrmont Point (aka 'the Royal Pacific). However, one of its most distinctive characteristics, the distinctive parapet skyline, a key feature of Federation Free Style architecture is best displayed from the John st vantage point.

Starting a new canvas of the 'Terminus Hotel',

2017 oil on canvas 56 x 76cm

Available

Enquiries

Some tendrils of the Virginia creeper that once covered most of its facade still cling to the top. It was possibly the only thing binding all the bricks together.

Starting a new canvas of the 'Terminus Hotel',

2017 oil on canvas 56 x 76cm

Available
Enquiries

The creeper is usually (and wrongly) known as 'ivy', however ivy doesn't change to russet tones in autumn, or drop its leaves for winter.

Starting a new canvas of the 'Terminus Hotel',

2017 oil on canvas 56 x 76cm

Available

Enquiries

The same creeper also covers much of the facade of the CSR manager's house further south down Harris St. An entire courtyard in the CSR refinery used to resemble a jungle.

Starting a new canvas of the 'Terminus Hotel',

2017 oil on canvas 56 x 76cm

Available

Enquiries

Long before 'green walls' became fashionable decor, the south facade of the building now rather bizarrely known as the 'Rum Store' was entirely covered in Virginia creeper from floor to ceiling.

Starting a new canvas of the 'Terminus Hotel',

2017 oil on canvas 56 x 76cm

Available

Enquiries

I've always wondered whether the Virginia creeper so prevalent in the Pyrmont of the last part of the 20th century had been planted by the same shade craving person.

Starting a new canvas of the 'Terminus Hotel',

2017 oil on canvas 56 x 76cm

Available

Enquiries

I'm glad that I took the opportunity to capture this moment. This is possibly the last time the Terminus will be in anything resembling its original state or composed of its original materials.

Starting a new canvas of the 'Terminus Hotel',

2017 oil on canvas 56 x 76cm

Available

Enquiries

It won't be very long before the Terminus is boarded up to undergo the sort of serious structural alterations that will be required for its reinvention.

Starting a new canvas of the 'Terminus Hotel',

2017 oil on canvas 56 x 76cm

Available

Enquiries

It's unknown at this stage whether the famous ghost sign on Harris St will be retained, as it is painted on the original brickwork.

Starting a new canvas of the 'Terminus Hotel'

2017 oil on canvas 56 x 76cm

Available 

Enquiries 

For more information about the Terminus and Pyrmont Point Hotels

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

The bad twin of Pyrmont Street

Pyrmont Paintings past and present 
Paintings of Pink pubs - Painting the Jolly Frog Part 2