Ground Zero

wake up
look around
memorise what you see
it may be gone tomorrow
everything changes. Someday
there will be nothing but what is remembered
there may be no-one to remember it.
Keep moving
wherever you stand is ground zero
a moving target is harder to hit

"Ground Zero" by Michael Dransfield 

Today's painting on my deck gallery is yet another canvas celebrating something that no longer exists & probably remembered by very few.

AGL38 'AGL Site, Mortlake' 2004
oil on canvas 75 x 100 cm
Available for sale

In 1884, the Australian Gas Light Company purchased 32 hectares of land at Mortlake and began gas production there on the 23rd May 1886.
The A.G.L. Gasworks at Mortlake boasted grandiose structures modelled on the Beckton Works in East London. It was probably no coincidence that the engineer in charge of works, Thomas Bush, had previously been employed at Beckton.

 

 

AGL38 'AGL Site, Mortlake' 2004

oil on canvas 75 x 100 cm

Available for sale

The company had operated other gasworks in Sydney, but their entire gas-making operation was transferred to Mortlake in 1922 as the river provided a cheap and efficient means of obtaining coal, which was its raw material.

There was an enormous workforce. When AGL's Mortlake plant was in full operation it used nearly 460,000 tonnes of coal per year which was brought from Hexham on the Hunter River, by colliers known as the 'Sixty Milers'.

The rotting hulk of one of the colliers decorates the upper reaches of the Parramatta River, and its remains can still be seen if the tide is high enough to allow passage for the Rivercats.

The initials “C.W.G.” stand for Carburetted Water Gas which sounds a little as though it has something to do with Coca-cola. The C.W.G. Building once contained 6 retort houses which had continually burnt coal from Newcastle to light Sydney’s streets. 

Exhibition of AGL site Mortlake paintings
in Breakfast Point Community Centre 2004 

 

 

The process of carbonization to obtain gas from coal was discontinued on 31st December 1971. Thereafter, natural gas from the interior of Australia was piped to Mortlake where it was given an odour for safety reasons and distributed to consumers throughout Sydney. Ironically, Mortlake itself was one of the last suburbs to be converted to natural gas. The gasworks finally closed on Friday 15th June 1990 & the sprawling 58 hectare site became a moonscape.

Exhibition of AGL site Mortlake paintings
in Breakfast Point Community Centre 2004

The site had already been half demolished by the time I found it and there were only a couple of other ruins dotted around the vast wasteland.
Extensive remediation had begun. As a century’s worth of stinking coal tar waste was removed from the site, networks of channels were carved through the glowing sandstone surrounding the C.W.G. Building. After rain, these channels would fill with water, becoming a network of canals and lakes reflecting the ruins.
A terrifying 40 metre chasm had been excavated in front of it to remove the coal tar residue. Against it the C.W.G. Building loomed overhead, neatly sliced in half and propped up with a mad cat’s cradle of eye-popping red bollards opening wide in front of me as though to welcome me with an embrace. I had to write myself a 'post it note' to attach to my easel to remind me not to walk backwards to admire my painting as there was only a couple of metres between my easel and a sudden drop!

Exhibition of AGL site Mortlake paintings
in Breakfast Point Community Centre 2004
The former AGL Gasworks site has now been completely redeveloped into the controversial new gated suburb of Breakfast Point by Rosecorp. The complex of white and pale beige apartments and townhouses is totally unrecognizable from its industrial past.

 
Exhibition of AGL site Mortlake paintings
in Breakfast Point Community Centre 2004
To coincide with the opening of their new suburb, Rosecorp and the CFMEU jointly invited me to hold a solo exhibition in their freshly built Community Hall.
My paintings consisted almost entirely of renditions of the C.W.G. Building, which had recently been demolished.
Irony totally intentional.

Related Posts 

My AGL Gasworks page

Crane, East Darling Harbour Wharves

In 2003, the State Government announced that the stevedoring wharves at East Darling Harbour, on the western edge of Miller's Point, known since the Depression as the 'Hungry Mile', would be transformed into a new urban precinct, which would later be known as Barangaroo.
The wharf has now closed forever and Sydney’s traditional role as a working harbour is essentially over.
For Sydney Harbour no longer to be a working port and to be stripped of its original character and purpose, was almost unthinkable.
I resolved to paint its hidden history before it was too late. This concrete expanse was often derided as 'ugly', usually by people who had never set foot on it, but I found it a rich and fascinating source of inspiration for a series of several hundred paintings.
I became 'Artist in Residence' in 2003, and was still painting there after the last wharfie left in October 2007. I always painted 'en plein air', even though the completed works have the compositional poise of a Jeffrey Smart.
DH135A 'Maintaining the crane' Diptych
2007 oil on canvas 51 x 25.5cm each panel
Available for sale

This was painted towards the end of East Darling Harbour's days as an operational wharf. I had often painted each of the 3 cranes on the wharf, although being able to get all three in a single canvas was nearly impossible. They didn't run on rails - they all had retractable stabilizers in the shape of pyramids, and these lifted to allow the cranes to trundle up and down the wharf on their rows of tyres.

I spent much of my time on the wharf chasing these wretched things up and down the wharf, in hot pursuit of my recalcitrant subjects. Even if their lower halves stayed put, they were raising, lowering, twisting and turning. I'd have to start 4 or 5 small canvases, each one with the crane in a different pose.

This crane was "L1" the oldest & most complicated of the 3 Liebherr cranes known by the wharfies as "Big Bird" as apparently it was originally yellow. 

It was loathed by the wharfies as it was complex and rather over-engineered, so prone to breaking down. The L3 crane was much easier to operate and maintain, and incidentally, much easier for me to paint. If the L1 crane moved even slightly out of its original position, it was infinitely harder for me to predict what I should alter to adapt the old position to the new one. The result is that I have a lot more unfinished and unfinishable paintings of this crane than of the 2 others put together. 

DH135A 'Maintaining the crane' left panel of Diptych
2007 oil on canvas 51 x 25.5cm each panel
Available for sale

When I was painting on the wharves, all three cranes were red, which made them difficult to paint against the red Wallenius Wilhelmsen ships. 

Although they were all a shade of red, and more than likely had been painted at the same time with the same brand of paint, each of the cranes was a different shade of red. Not just lighter or darker, but some were definitely more towards the pink than red. The L1 crane was a light- medium bluish pink, the sort of pink derived from mixing magenta or alizarin crimson with white. L2 veered between napthol crimson, Windsor bright red and in the more care-worn patches, the pink obtained by mixing white with cadmium red deep. L3 was in places almost a true red, requiring mostly cadmium red medium and even a few vermilion highlights. All these colours had very different properties, as the cadmium colours were very opaque and the alizarin and magenta were semi-transparent and took much longer to dry. They had one thing in common though, they were amongst the most expensive paints to buy - Series 4. 5 or 6. The prices go up exponentially from Series 1. Series 2 paints are about half as much again as the previous series, Series 3 half to two thirds as much as 2, etc, etc. As usually the cranes were in front of a red Wallenius Wilhelsen ship, which was a different hue of red again (usually cadmium red light), this meant that the art shops became seriously rich from my stint as 'Artist in Residence ' on the wharf. But to do justice to the scene in front of me I had to be true to the subtle nuances of the changing light and colour in front of me.

DH135A 'Maintaining the crane' right hand Diptych
2007 oil on canvas 51 x 25.5cm each panel
Available for sale

Later in 2007, all three cranes were painted yellow again in the AT & T colours. A couple were taken to Melbourne's Webb Dock, but 'Big Bird' was taken down to Port Kembla on the "Sea-Tow" barge.

It's still at Port Kembla - I noticed it when I was painting the Port Kembla Copper Stack before it was demolished in February 2014.

I painted this diptych in 2007 as it was undergoing much needed maintenance in front of Wharf 6, not long before its new paint job and long sea journey.

The odd looking object wrapped in white is a helicopter. Some of the wharfies had been discussing what would be the most difficult object to wrap as a birthday present, so that the recipient wouldn't be able to guess what it was. One of them suggested a tricycle, but I think the helicopter would have won that competition.

 

Related Posts

 

My paintings of the Hungry Mile 

 

The end of an era 

 

Paintings of a passing port 

 

Last of the Hungry Mile 

 

Painting the Svitzer tug 'Wonga' 

 

A last look at the Harbour Control Tower 

 

Millers Point from the top of the Harbour Control Tower 

Painting Mungo Scott Flour Mills, Summer Hill Part 2

Today's painting on the easel of my deck gallery is from 2009 and is of the last flour truck to depart the Mungo Scott Flour Mills in Summer Hill.

SU9 Summer Hill, Mungo Scott Flour Mills Last Flour truck .
2009 oil on canvas 28 x 36cm
Available for sale
This vast behemoth was the last operational flour mill in Sydney.
Mungo Scott Ltd acquired the land for £3000 in 1916 and built the flour mill with an estimated £10,000 budget in 1921-22.

SU3 Summer Hill Mungo Scott Flour Mills Late Afternoon
2009 oil on canvas 30 x 30cm
Available for sale
It exploited the newly built Metropolitan goods line between Wardell Road and Darling Harbour.
The Summer Hill freight line, alongside Hawthorne Canal, was used twice a week to service the Mills. This branch line was the last operational section of the once mighty Metropolitan goods line before it was redeveloped as light rail/cycling track.

SU2 Summer Hill Mungo Scott Flour Mills Evening
2009 oil on canvas 30 x 30cm
Available for sale
A huge fire in the mill in 1927 was believed to have been caused by sparks caused by passing trains igniting stored flour.
The landmark silos appeared in the early 1950s, as Goodman Fielder grew the Mill’s capacity. Allied Mills took control of the buildings in the 1950s and they were used as a key processing facility for wheat grown in New South Wales until 2009.
The last train ran to the Mungo Scott flour mill on 1 December 2008.

SU1 Summer Hill Mungo Scott Flour Mills by Night
2009 oil on canvas 30 x 30cm
Available for sale
As the Mungo Scott Flour Mills were conveniently close to the Taylor galleries in Smith street where I held regular exhibitions, I was well placed to be able to paint canvases of some of its last operations, including some of the last flour trucks to leave the Mills. 

Allied Mills finally vacated the site forever in about 2010 and moved their operations to a huge site in Picton, in Sydney's south-west, which I drive past whenever I exhibit my paintings at the Thirlmere Festival of Steam.

SU6 Summer Hill Mungo Scott Flour Mills Last Flour truck
2009 oil on canvas 41 x 61cm
PRIVATE COLLECTION : SYDNEY
Enquiries about other Summer Hill paintings

The precinct is now redeveloped and is home to offices and more than 400 apartments.

Related Posts

Painting from the silos of the Mungo Scott Flour Mills

The empty mask - Edwin Davey Flour Mills

Painting from the silos of Mungo Scott Flour Mills, Summer Hill

Today's painting on the easel of my 'deck gallery' is a view of and from the silos of Summer Hill’s famous Mungo Scott flour mill. This vast behemoth was an icon of Sydney’s inner west skyline for nearly 100 years.
It also evokes memories of a gallery where I used to exhibit between 2003 - 10.
From the early 1990s I used to exhibit in the Delmar Gallery in Summer Hill. When the Director, Max Taylor, left to establish his own gallery, the Taylor Galleries, I exhibited there from 2003 until its closure in 2010. The Mungo Scott flour mill was just a few doors down from the Taylor Galleries in Smith Street, Summer Hill. I was utterly fascinated with it and often painted views of it from the surrounding streets before or after delivering or collecting paintings.

SU12 Mungo Scott Flour Mills Night from the top of the silo
2007 oil on canvas 30 x 30cm 

 Available for sale
One day in 2004 I finally plucked up the courage to ask to be allowed to paint there. They couldn't have been kinder!
I was given the 'grand tour' of the Escher like maze of criss-crossing, zig-zagging walkways from the main building to the top of the silos. When I returned to paint there, everyone helped carry my easel and wet canvases.
Just as well, as while I was certainly strong enough, I would have been hopelessly lost getting from one building to another. It was so confusing navigating the various levels, and it was complicated by the fact that it was still an operational flour mill.
My guide wore a 'Gumby' style hairnet, goggles and gloves. He joked that people knew whether or not they were gluten intolerant within the hour.
Apparently I am - I was sneezing, wheezing & itching, and had to wear a mask whenever I painted there as I had trouble breathing. I've never really liked bread, and now I know why!

SU8 Summer Hill Mungo Scott Flour Mills Panorama
2004 ink acrylic pastel on paper 118 x 118cm 

 Available for sale
The silos were truly scary, especially at night. They were very high up, sloped & some didn't even have guardrails. When I was drawing and painting my huge panoramas of the unforgettable view of the inner west from the top of the silos, I was frankly terrified as I had unfortunately picked the highest silo, and for extra points it didn't have a guardrail.

SU7 Summer Hill Mungo Scott Flour Mills Panorama
2004 oil painting on canvas 91 x 122cm 

Enquiries about other Summer Hill paintings 
The spectacular view made up for the danger. The Summer Hill freight line carving its way through the inner west was directly beneath me.
Soon it would be literally re-cycled. Some of it would be reserved for light rail, and some would be a cycling track.
I was lucky to get to the Mungo Scott Flour Mills in time. Summer Hill was fast being engulfed by the tide of gentrification transforming former gritty industrial zones into hip neighbourhoods, driving up rents and pushing artists even further away from the inner city.

Related Posts

My page of Urban Landscape paintings

The Empty mask

Painting Sydney Harbour in the footsteps of Turner

All this winter I've felt something's been lacking.

Vivid.

Due to Covid-19 it couldn't be held this year, and for all I know New Year's Eve and Australia Day celebrations may not be held in the foreseeable future either.

I've often mocked Sydney for valuing style over substance, but I have to confess that I like a mindlessly pretty display of fairy lights against a harbour view as much as anyone.

So for anyone getting withdrawal symptoms, here's one on the easel of my deck gallery.

U118 Fireship under the Bridge
oil on canvas 2003 61 x 91cm
Available for sale
This canvas of the burning ship against a backdrop of fireworks illuminating the Sydney Harbour Bridge was painted in the studio from a series of quick gouache studies that I did on New Year's Eve 2003, well over a decade before Vivid was ever thought of. I regard this as a sort of 'proto-Vivid'.
It added a new dimension to the usual fireworks and was a startling sight if you weren't aware that it was in fact a special effect, and not a tragic fire on board the 'James Craig'.
The first time I saw it, like hundreds, possibly thousands of others, I rang 000 in a panic to report it. You could almost hear the person from Emergency Services rolling their eyes, as they assured me that it was just a special effect, that , no, the James Craig was just fine, and thanked me for my misplaced concern.
The Fireship apparently commemorated an early 19th century convict ship that had caught fire, and in the weeks after, during the Sydney Festival, there was a 'son et lumiere' show every night for a couple of weeks. I forget the details and the story, and frankly I think everyone else did as well. The images of the fire reflected in the water were all the spectators really were interested in, and the story seemed just a flimsy excuse.
As I painted some quick sketches in gouache and watercolour, I was glad that i'd spent so much of my 1996 Marten Bequest Traveling Art Scholarship holed up in the Print and Drawing Room of the Clore Gallery (the section of the Tate Gallery devoted to the work of Turner, obsessively painting studies of the many fabulous Turner watercolours in their collection. The Petworth series and the burning of the Houses of Parliament were my favourites. I became so good at painting them that the staff became slightly alarmed, and demanded that I sign my studies on the back so that I wouldn't be able to do a bit of a 'switcheroo' while their backs were turned! I took this as a sort of a backhanded compliment, but my goal wasn't to just mindlessly copy, but to try to conquer the mystery of painting sea,sky, storm, night and fire. How to make the intangible, tangible.
When I returned from my Traveling Art Scholarship, I actually exhibited some of these in a couple of exhibitions "The Grand Tour" and "In the Footsteps of the Masters" that acted like a sort of debriefing - a transition phase from the scholarship to the routine of regular commercial exhibitions.
I'd seen a lot of amazing art, and learnt a lot, but how was I going to incorporate this into what I would paint on my return?

U118 Fireship under the Bridge
oil on canvas 2003 61 x 91cm
Available for sale
Painting the Fireship was a chance to give a virtuoso display of layers of translucent glazes of breathtakingly expensive and exotic colours such as Aureolin, Rose Madder and Alizarin Crimson. These aren't the sort of colours that usually get a work out during plein air painting.
However, as I started to paint lost trades and dying industries, I would get more and more frequent opportunities to use them. Subjects like the Oxycutter at William Wallbank and Sons, or the Blacksmiths at the Eveleigh Railway Workshops provided further connections to the lost world of the Early Industrial Revolution that Turner and his predecessors de Loutherbourg and Joseph Wright of Derby immortalized. The major difference is that these artists were painting the founding of this era - I'm painting its demise.

Related Posts


Vivid

Meltdown, Oxycutting at William Wallbank and Sons

Irons in the fire

Painting the industrial past on Cockatoo Island - Before and After

Cockatoo Island, the largest island in Sydney Harbour, is located at the intersection of the Parramatta and Lane Cove rivers. It is the last vestige of the era of the Industrial Revolution remaining in Sydney.

CK8B & CK52 Crane & slipway from the Officers headquarters
1989 & 2007 oil on canvas 61 x 46cm

Enquiries

Between 1839 -1869 Cockatoo Island was a prison colony.

The inmates not only excavated the 2 tunnels and 2 graving docks that nearly bisect the island, but to add insult to injury they even had to build their own gaol using the excavated sandstone of the island! The only successful escapee was bushranger Captain Thunderbolt (his more prosaic real name was Fred Ward), who escaped on 19th September 1863.

After its stint as Sydney's 'Alcatraz' the island was used as a graving dock,  reformatory and industrial schools, and a major shipbuilding site.
In the early twentieth century Cockatoo Island became one of Australia’s most important industrial sites where ships were built, repaired and modified. Thousands were trained and employed there. I still meet people who did their apprenticeship as a boilermaker or fitter and turner on Cockatoo Island.

As the progressive removal of tariffs, regressive government policies, the high dollar and the pressures of globalization helped kill off Australian manufacturing, the focus of employment has turned increasingly to tourism, entertainment and service industries.

Most of Sydney’s former sites of industrial and maritime activity have now been gobbled up by developers for monolithic dormitories of beige apartment blocks. After many political battles, some remaining industrial structures of Cockatoo Island have been retained, against all odds. Although some large workshops, slipways, wharves, residences and other buildings remain, such as the Turbine Shop and the Mould Loft, many major buildings were demolished after Cockatoo Island closed as a dockyard in 1991.

Now it's a UNESCO world heritage site and its industrial ambience has been exploited for many cultural events. It was the site for the filming of X Men Origins -Wolverine and several 'reality' programs. Since 2008 it has been the flagship venue of Sydney’s Biennale. However, its original function as part of Sydney’s rapidly disappearing Working Harbour, has gone forever.
When I was 'Artist in Residence' there in the mid-late 1980s and then again in the early 2000s, I was the only artist on the island.

For the last decade, the public has been allowed to visit the island, but when I painted the 2nd canvas in 2007, it was still off limits. The Sydney Harbour Federation Trust was frantically fixing up the infrastructure to be able to open it to tourists. I would travel by barge at the crack of dawn from Mort's Dock with the other workmen.

CK8B 2 Cranes on the North-West Slipway
1989 oil on canvas 61 x 46cm
Enquiries

I started painting on Cockatoo Island in the mid 1980s when it was still operational and submarines were still being refitted there.

I'd have to sign the Official Secrets Act and promise faithfully not to paint any submarines or sell any of my paintings to the Russians. I'd leave my easel, paints and table in the office of the Ship Painters and Dockers building between Fitzroy and Sutherland docks.

There was a sign "Pro Painter Foreman" on the door, which always made me laugh. I was so naive that I didn't know anything about the reputation of this notorious union!

These two canvases were painted at the same location,the north - western slipway, at the same time of day, at the same time of year and on the same format canvas - but 18 years apart.

CK52 Crane & slipway from the Officers headquarters
2007 oil on canvas 61 x 46cm
Enquiries

The most obvious difference between the 1989 and 2007 paintings is the omission of the pale green crane, a casualty of a storm not long after the 1989 canvas was painted.

This was the Butters crane, purchased from the Whyalla Shipyards in 1979, when Cockatoo Island was trying to adopt more innovative strategies,for the construction of HMAS Success in 1983-4. The rather forlorn looking crane left on its own in the 2007 painting, was the ex- West Wall crane, also a comparatively recent addition to the island, as it was relocated from Garden Island in the 1970s.

This partial modernization was a false dawn, however, as HMAS Success would be last ever ship built and launched at Cockatoo Island. Less than 8 years later, the island was closed.     

Related Posts

My page of Cockatoo Island Paintings

No 'glamping' on Cockatoo Island

Article written by Steve Meacham in the Sydney Morning Herald

Painting the Svitzer tug Wonga in Sydney Harbour

The 'Wonga' was built in 1983 and was one of the Svitzer 'pusher' tugs.

Their names started with 'W' - Wilga, Wonga, Woona, Walan, Watagan. I've no idea why they picked that particular letter to christen their tugs. As a 'wonga' is a type of pigeon, not a marine bird, I'm not sure why this name was chosen for a marine vessel.

To me, the trio of names 'Wilga', 'Wonga', 'Woona', had a sort of alliterative poetry, and whenever I painted one of the three, I would be asked if I also had paintings of the other two, to make up the set.

DH236 'The tug 'Wonga' with 'Victorian Reliance''
2007 oil on board 20 x 25cm
SOLD
Enquiries about other paintings of tugs

This shows the 'Wonga' in action with a cargo ship.

They were once a very common sight in Sydney Harbour, when Sydney Harbour was still a fully working port. As 'Artist in Residence' on the East Darling Harbour Wharves during the first decade of this century, I would see at least one of these tugs everyday. If they weren't accompanying one of the container ships or Ro-ros (roll-on roll-off car vessels) to the East Darling Harbour Wharves, Glebe Island or White Bay, they would be escorting a cruise ship to the Cruise ship terminal at Darling Harbour Wharf 8, or an oil tanker to Gore bay.

DH241 'The 'Wonga' 2011
oil on board 28 x 35cm
Available

This painting shows the 'Wonga' passing Goat Island. It was on its way to a new task, from its then home in East Balmain next to the ferries.

The number of tugs in Sydney Harbour declined with the closure of East Darling Harbour Wharves and its replacement with the controversial Barangaroo development project.

DH194 The 'Wonga' 2008
oil on canvas 20 x 25cm
SOLD
Enquiries about other paintings of tugs

This earlier painting shows the 'Wonga' passing Balmain.

Now, the 'Wonga' is one of the 2 tugs (the other being the 'Walan') based at Port Pirie which is located 223 kilometres north of Adelaide at the top of Upper Spencer Gulf,

Port Pirie, a small town of 16,000, is still home to the type of heavy industry now removed from Sydney Harbour. The Nyrstar concentrate smelter in Port Pirie is one of the largest smelters in the world.

Related Posts

Painting the tugboats of Sydney Harbour

Marine Art exhibition at Australian Maritime Museum

In the pink -the former Pyrmont Arms Hotel, Harris Street Pyrmont

The former pub 'The Pyrmont Arms' was at 42-44 Harris Street, Pyrmont on the corner of Harris and Bowman Streets.
Built in the 1870s,it closed in the early 1990s when the CSR refinery and distillery were progressively shut down and demolished to make way for the Jackson's landing development. Since then, it has been renovated as retail outlets, restaurants and home units.

P248 The 'Pyrmont Arms' from the CSR 1

1990 oil on canvas 31 x 31cm

Available

I first painted the Pyrmont Arms Hotel as a bird's eye view from the roof of the CSR refinery.I had been the 'Artist in Residence' at the CSR Refinery from the late 1980s to the start of its demolition in the mid 1990s. I had previously been painting at the top of the Panhouse, but one day in a fit of bravery I decided to paint from the top of the Boilerhouse next to the chimneys.
The CSR boilerhouse is now the site of the 'Elizabeth' apartment block of the Jackson's Landing LendLease development.
The Pyrmont Arms Hotel was then still an operating pub and was painted a grubby faded pale pinkish beige. On the back of the pub's western side facing the Scott Street squats, there was a huge ad for 'Have a cold gold KB', unfortunately not visible from my rooftop studio. Across the road was the brick facade of the CSR chem labs.
It didn't stand out from the rest of the rather dingy terraces at the 'Land's End' of Harris street, but what caught my eye was the contrast between the terraces and the overgrown area around the squats that was rapidly turning into a wilderness. I painted a small square canvas focussing on just the Pyrmont Arms, and resolved one day to paint a panorama of the northern end of Harris Street from this vantage point.

P249 'Pyrmont panorama- from the CSR '

1991 oil on canvas 46 x 92cm

Available

A few months later, I climbed the many levels of revolting, sugar syrup encrusted stairs to the top of the CSR boilerhouse again, to paint this panorama, and was startled to find that the formerly almost unnoticeable pub had succumbed to a brash attempt at 'renovation'.
Weirdly, it shared the same revolting shade of pink with another dying pub at the other end of Pyrmont, the 'New York Hotel' in Edward Street, opposite the Pyrmont Power Station.
This fluoro paint job was such a product of its time that it defined the late 1980s to 1990s, a period without style or taste. I remember leggings and jumpers in that same fabulously horrid "glow in the dark" colour, possibly an over-reaction against the ochres and browns of the 1970s. In architecture, it was known not very fondly as "Paddington Pink" or "Paddo pink" for short, although the examples in Paddington itself were much more muted.

P248B 'The 'Pyrmont Arms' from the CSR 2'

1991 oil on canvas 31 x 31cm

Available

It made the Pyrmont Arms stick out like a sore thumb from the dingy red brick warehouses and bond stores, and not in a good way.
I don't know if it was still an operating pub then or whether the new paint job was a desperate last ditch attempt to attract customers or preparation for its sale and possible redevelopment.
For the truth was that the pubs of Pyrmont were hanging by a thread. Their customers were gone with the destruction or relocation of the local industries that had employed them, and the industries of Pyrmont's future were yet to replace them.
The CSR Refinery and Distillery, which had replaced the sandstone quarrymen of northern Pyrmont a century before, was almost deserted and would be demolished and replaced with Jackson's Landing by the middle of the decade. But there was a strange interregnum before the new apartments were built and filled with inhabitants, and the northern end of Harris Street was a ghost town.
The iconic Terminus Hotel, only 2 blocks further up Harris Street, had already ceased trading a decade before, and stood abandoned, neglected and a constant source of speculation for the next 30 years, before its very recent renovation. How the 'Royal Pacific', later to be rechristened the 'Pyrmont Point'/ 'Point Hotel', ever kept on trading is a much bigger mystery that any of the urban myths swirling around the 30 year vacancy of the Terminus.
What is it with the lurid colour schemes inflicted on moribund pubs?
Far from Pyrmont, another doomed hotel, the 'Jolly Frog' also got the pink treatment not long before it suffered one of those mysterious fires that afflict abandoned buildings.
They must have used the same colourblind painter and decorator. And he must have got the paint at a huge discount, or it might have 'fallen off the back of a truck'.
Either way, it didn't work. All closed as pubs not long after.

P248C '42 Harris st -ex Pyrmont Arms'

2012 oil on canvas 31 x 31cm

Available

The 'New York Hotel' has been painted a tasteful off-white, and is now a medical centre, of all things!
'The Pyrmont Arms' has now been painted a dull blue on the ground floor and a muted yellow for the upper floors. It is no longer a hotel, but has been reasonably sympathetically renovated and is now a combination of apartments above and a bottle-o below.

And the Jolly Frog, 6 years after its devastating fire, is still awaiting redevelopment.

Related Posts

Paintings of Pink Pubs

The Boiling Frog

My page of Pyrmont Paintings

A Tale of 2 Pyrmont Hotels - The Terminus and the Point

To the Point

Pretty Vacant

Terminus Redux