Industrial Cathedral

Industrial Cathedral
"Industrial Cathedral" charcoal on paper 131 x 131 cm Jane Bennett. Finalist in 1998 Dobell Drawing Prize Art Gallery of NSW Finalist 1998 Blake Prize Winner 1998 Hunter's Hill Open Art Prize

About Me

My photo
Sydney, NSW, Australia
I'm an Industrial Heritage Artist who paints "en plein air".If it's damaged, derelict, doomed and about to disappear, I'll be there to paint it.
Showing posts with label wharf. Show all posts
Showing posts with label wharf. Show all posts

Saturday 9 July 2022

The Other Art Fair at Barangaroo



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Going to the fair!
The Other Art Fair, Barangaroo, July 21 - 24
I am proud to have been selected to participate in The Other Art Fair at the Cutaway at Barangaroo in Sydney, July 21st to 24th.
I am so excited to show you my plein air painting series ‘The Hungry Mile'.
They were all painted 'en plein air' when Barangaroo was still the "Hungry Mile Wharf" on the exact spot where The Other Art Fair, Sydney will be held.
 
A preview of some of the works I'll exhibit 
 

OPENING HOURS
Thursday 21 July 4-7PM / 7-10PM
Friday     22 July 2PM – 10PM
Saturday 23 July 10AM – 6PM
Sunday   24 July 10AM – 5PM


 

Discounted tickets for followers of my blog:

  • 25% discount off tickets for Friday to Sunday, redeemable using the promo Tickets Code: OTHERS25
  • To book tickets, visit: https://www.theotherartfair.com/sydney/tickets
  • Enter the code OTHERS25 in the ‘Enter Promo Code’ field.
  • Note: you need to select the Promo Code option before you select any ticket times.
  • Hint: the promo code link is on the right under the heading ‘Please select your ticket option below’
  • This code gives  25% off all ticket types until July 21.
  • Promo Code must be used by July 21
Please join me and 110 other artists at The Cutaway at Barangaroo, July 21st to 24th. It would be lovely to see you there.

For more of my paintings of this area

"Paintings of a passing Port"

 "The Last of the Hungry Mile"

"Barangaroo - Tabula Rasa" 

"Sydney Harbour Control Tower"

 

Sunday 30 August 2020

Heavy Lifting

Plein air oil painting of crane lifting a boat at the Hungry Mile, East Darling harbour Wharves painted by marine artist Jane Bennett
DH143 Preparing for a boat lift
2007 oil on canvas 92 x 122cm

Available for sale

 










 
 
 
 
Today's painting on my easel on the deck gallery was a large canvas painted during my stint as "Artist in Residence" at the East Darling Harbour Wharves. Very few container ships were docked at the East Darling Harbour Wharves - in its last 5 years of operations most went to Botany, which handled container or "boxes" only. 
The East Darling Harbour Wharves specialized in break bulk cargo - items that can’t be transported by container, sometimes resulting in a diverse & rather incongruous payload. Sand, salt, gypsum was bagged or piled in gleaming unstable mounds on the wharf. Rolls of steel, pipes & timber lengths for construction were stacked in piles inside the sheds. Cars, vans, trucks, forklifts, excavators  & agricultural machinery were driven down the ramps of the Ro-ros at breakneck speed as though the wharfies were auditioning for yet another remake of ‘the Italian Job’ or the ‘Fast & the Furious”, & then parked in neat rows until they were lifted or driven onto B-doubles. 
A selection of excavators, mining or agricultural machinery and the ubiquitous rolls of steel coils would lie for weeks inside the sheds.  Luxurious 'hot-water' boats, most of which were larger than my house and definitely cost more, were nonchalantly lifted off the ships & dangled from the cranes like giant earrings. Some of these boats were so enormous that they looked almost capable of carrying the ship that brought them. There were even more oddball items such as helicopters, train carriages, yachts & caravans. And one unforgettable afternoon  a couple of horses broke free while being unloaded from their box and had to be caught and restabled, turning the wharf into a wild west show.
Plein air oil painting of crane lifting a boat at the Hungry Mile, East Darling harbour Wharves painted by marine artist Jane Bennett
DH143 Preparing for a boat lift
2007 oil on canvas 92 x 122cm

Available for sale














 
 
 
 
This canvas was painted from the centre of the area between the Patrick offices in Shed 5, looking north towards Shed 4, with the western end of Balmain in the background. The huge white shed of White Bay can be seen in the background in the gap between the crane & the boat that has just been unloaded.
The giant vermilion crane, “L3” is bathed in clear morning light, poised with its pink spreader aloft in mid air. It had just placed the boats on wooden structures known as “Nafis” so they could be hooked up to one of the 2 rather elderly forklifts to be positioned on the wharf until they were transferred onto a B-double truck & delivered to a marina. I asked whether the term ‘Nafi’ was an abbreviation or a brand name, or anything to do with the naval term 'Naafi" but nobody on the wharf seemed to know the origin of the word. Like many other items on the wharf, the Nafis were brightly painted, mostly in primary colours, but here there is an orange one on the left hand side & a green one on the left.  There were random clusters of them stacked neatly one on top of the other all over the wharf. 
The unnaturalistic colours of the machinery added to the pervasive feeling of living inside a Jeffrey Smart painting. The maintenance workers, who serviced the cranes & forklifts, always wore bright orange overalls, of exactly the same hue as the witches hats. I know that none of it was arranged deliberately to help me compose my painting, but there was a pleasing compositional triangle of the orange –clothed workman striding purposefully away from the orange sled, with the orange witches hat in the foreground. The spreader directly above his head also has a matching orange “A” shaped crane attachment, although to strike a discordant note, its framework is a teeth-jarring shade of pink. The reds, pinks & oranges of the machinery stand out strongly against the large expanse of clear pale blue sky & matching strip of sea are interrupted by the sap green of the trees of Balmain in the background. Oddly, the completed painting has the poise and compositional balance of Jeffrey Smart and Edward Hopper, although painted under infinitely more trying circumstances than a neat white studio. Although large & complex, this was a pure plein air painting- totally painted outdoors, no photography, no tricks. Just the culmination of a lifetime of observation.
It was an eye-opening experience to be able to see first-hand, how much work & how many people have to be involved in providing goods that we take for granted.
This was painted in September 2007, in the last few weeks of East Darling Harbour Wharves activity as an operational wharf. The following week, all three shore cranes were repainted in the yellow & white colours of AT & T livery, prior to being moved onto a barge & towed to their new homes in Webb Dock, Melbourne & Port Kembla.
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Friday 28 August 2020

Norfolk Guardian

Today's painting on my deck gallery is a diptych of an unusual visitor to the East Darling Harbour Wharves.
I spent most of the early 2000s as ‘Artist in Residence’ on the East Darling Harbour Wharves before its redevelopment into Barangaroo. 
One day in 2005 I arrived very early on a calm clear morning & a couple of wharfies grabbed me as I signed in.They were very excited & yelled “Quick, get your easel, you must paint the Norfolk Guardian- you don’t see ships like this every day!” 
A smallish vessel was docking at Wharf 5. It had an oddly shaped crane in its centre, which I later found out was known as a ‘derrick’ crane as it looked similar to the old fashioned oil rigs. A Derrick ship’s crane is a relic of the past, harking back to the days before containerization forced uniformity of ship design & changed their lines from sleek to squat & boxy.
The luminous peach tones of the horizon meeting the skyline of Goat Island & the northern suburbs in the background harmonized with the butter yellow ship's crane & sky blue hull, making an odd contrast with the heavy industrial subject matter. 
I watched the complex interplay of the ship's crane with the shore crane with a mixture of fascination & trepidation as rows of pipes were unloaded with consummate skill.
I didn't know how long I'd have to paint it before it left, so I added an extra canvas to the original one, making the total image a square.
Plein air oil painting of Islander ship Norfolk Guardian unloading at East Darling Harbour Wharves painted by Jane Bennett
DH34A-B'The Norfolk Guardian Diptych' 2005





























 
       










 
each panel oil on canvas 91 x 46 cm
Available for sale

The M.V. Norfolk Guardian (IMO: 8600856) is a General Cargo that was built in 1987, sailing under the flag of Tonga, & freighting break bulk cargo to Norfolk Island, New Zealand & the South Pacific. Ports of call include Norfolk Island, Auckland, Lyttleton & Marsden Point, Tasmania. Transhipments can be arranged to various destinations in the South Pacific, including Samoa, Fiji, etc.
Cargo handled by the Norfolk Guardian includes: general cargo, hazardous goods, freezer/cooler, hardwood poles, sawn timber, processed timber products.
They also ship Personal Effects from Norfolk Island & New Zealand to Yamba, Australia.
"Break bulk" is a term used for products which can't be transported in containers. It includes a wide mix of articles- from salt, gypsum, cement to timber, steel coils and heavy machinery as well as cars, trucks and boats.

About 50 years ago, the containerization of shipping modified the wharves dramatically & transformed port cities beyond recognition.

The humble shipping container isn't just a metal box - it created the world as we know it today.

Once goods were loaded and transported around the world as "break bulk" cargo. Container standardization revolutionized global trade, making it easier, quicker and cheaper. However,with the advent of the container, some of the mystery & magic of the shipping industry was lost forever.

John Crowley, the Port Operations Manager, used to describe the East Darling Harbour Wharves (aka Port Jackson) as a ‘boutique’ wharf. 
Port Botany is built on a superhuman scale and only deals with containers, so is huge, homogeneous and increasingly run by robots. Port Jackson, on the other hand, had a mix of break-bulk & containers & therefore was more dependent on the personal skills and judgement of the individual wharf workers. 
Islander ships are dwarfed by the container ships & totally unsuitable for the huge computerized straddle cranes of Port Botany. 
Now that the East Darling Harbour Wharves are closed, most "break bulk" is unloaded at Port Kembla, although Blackwattle Bay and to an increasingly lesser extent Glebe Island and White Bay still handle salt, cement and gypsum. 
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