There goes the neighbourhood

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

Stairway to Nowhere

No way in, & no way out. 

No way up & no way down. 

High above street level and clinging to the northern end of the sandstone escarpment fringing Hickson Road in Millers Point, is a stairway to nowhere.

The entrance and exit are totally bricked-up. 

Everyone has heard of 'ghost signs' - but these are 'ghost stairs'.

Where are these spooky steps meant to lead?

MP2 Hickson Road stairs to nowhere

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

2014 acrylic on canvas 31 x 26cm

Available for sale 

It just sits there embedded in the sandstone.  

No-one can climb into the section in the centre, as the base is totally bricked-in.

Presumably it wasn't fully bricked up because of financial considerations, & the partial enclosure would serve to prevent even the most determined parkour enthusiast from climbing to the top. 

'Tomason' aka Thomasson or Hyperart Thomasson (Japanese: Tomason トマソン or Chōgeijutsu Tomason 超芸術トマソン) is a type of conceptual art named by the Japanese artist Akasegawa Genpei , a member of a Japanese art & architecture collective formed in 1986 known as Rojo Kansatsu (Roadside Observation). It's a term for useless, abandoned leftovers, which have been inadvertently preserved & even maintained as unintentional art created by the city itself. They are strange & haunting vestiges of the incessant churn of building, destruction, and redevelopment that characterizes the city. The equivalent of a human appendix or the vestigial remnants of tiny non-functional limbs on a snake's skeleton. 

The inspiration for the term was Gary Thomasson, a baseball player signed with great fanfare & given a huge contract, but who put in a such a disappointing performance that his name became a byword for uselessness. His position on the team was a fitting analogy for "an object, part of a building, that was maintained in good condition, but with no purpose, to the point of becoming a work of art." A 'Stairway to nowhere' is a type of 'Tomason' also known as a "Pure Staircase"(Japanese: Muyō kaidan 無用階段 )

It makes a quirky counterpart to 2 fully functional steps at opposite ends of the wharf precinct - High Steps & Agar Steps. The High steps were cut into the cliff face at the southernmost end of High Street. Agar Steps is on the western side of Observatory Hill, connecting Kent Street and Upper Fort Street. They were designed as a continuation of Agar Street, (now High Street) named after Thomas Agars, a merchant and City councillor. Originally called the Flagstaff Steps, Agar Steps was built to provide access to the Model School &Sydney Observatory.

During the early 20th century, the streetscapes of Millers Point were in a state of turmoil subsequent to large scale resumption by the Government as part of its program to eradicate the Bubonic plague.

By the 1920s whole streets had disappeared, new cliff faces had been carved into the bedrock and hundreds of houses were demolished & replaced. Quarrying to sea level along Hickson Road resulted in the creation of a platform carved into the exposed sandstone, creating a new urban terrace, 'High Street' by the Sydney Harbour Trust. 

The stairs cling to the wall above Hickson Road, leading up towards High Street & the deck of one of the three bridges built across Hickson Road.
The three bridges which carry Argyle, Munn and Windmill Streets over Hickson Road are rare examples of Monier Arch bridges. They were constructed along with the cuttings and other civil works in the area between 1910 and 1914 as part of the redevelopment of Walsh Bay by the Sydney Harbour Trust.  For the time, they were controversial & cutting edge technology as they were some of the earliest bridges to be built in Sydney using a new material called ferro-concrete (now known as reinforced concrete). 

The stairway to nowhere is a relic left over from the construction of the Monier bridge over Argyle street.

Yesterday, upon the stair,
I met a man who wasn't there
He wasn't there again today
I wish, I wish he'd go away...

When I came home last night at three
The man was waiting there for me
But when I looked around the hall
I couldn't see him there at all!
Go away, go away, don't you come back any more!
Go away, go away, and please don't slam the door... (slam!)

Last night I saw upon the stair
A little man who wasn't there
He wasn't there again today
Oh, how I wish he'd go away...

 

'Antigonish (I met a man who wasn't there)'

by Hughes Mearns
 

Except it was the stair that wasn't there.

In metaphysics, a paradoxical argument by Willard Van Orman Quine in his 1948 paper "On What There Is" used the phrase 'Plato's beard' as a term for the philosophy of understanding something based on what does not exist. 

'Plato's beard' may blunt 'Occam's Razor'.

Related Posts

 

My Millers Point page in this blog

 

May close without warning

 

Barangaroo - Tabula Rasa

 

Banners, Millers Point

 

There goes the neighbourhood 

 

 

Fish and chips, painting in Windsor

Painting a Thompson Square panorama

in Windsor

Painting Windsor Seafoods and its neighbour Gloria Jean's Coffee from just outside the Macquarie Arms Hotel.

My favourite fast food shop in Windsor!

 TSW11 'George st from Thompson Square '
 2013 oil on canvas 31 x 153cm
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 I usually painted the trees, river and the graceful Georgian architecture on either side of the park. I found that I really enjoyed painting Windsor's George st shopping strip or "Eat St".

I've decided to paint a series of studies of individual shops.

Starting to paint a small canvas
'Windsor Seafoods and Gloria Jean's Coffee'
2014 oil on canvas 28 x 36cm
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Windsor Seafoods at 74 George St Windsor is in the AC Stearn Building.built in 1907.

The name "A. C. Stearn" and date is helpfully written in decorative maroon lettering on the top floor of the facade of this impressive heritage building.
One of the legendary attractions of Windsor Seafoods is their macaw.

However "Snappa" is only in residence 3 or 4 days a week, and by the lack of raucous screeching, this must have been one of "Snappa"'s days off.

Starting to paint a small canvas
'Windsor Seafoods and Gloria Jean's Coffee '
2014 oil on canvas 28 x 36cm
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The original balcony of this handsome two story building  was unfortunately removed in the 1950's.

However it was later restored to its former grandeur  in 1975, and then was updated again in 1988, in preparation for the Bicentenary celebrations.

Halfway through painting a small canvas
'Windsor Seafoods and Gloria Jean's Coffee '
2014 oil on canvas 28 x 36cm
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There is a little laneway between Gloria Jean's Coffee and Windsor Seafoods which is topped by a cream wall that I initially thought was a walkway from the top floor of one building to another. It isn't, or if it is, you'd need the skills of a tightrope walker.
On closer inspection it's just a few rows of bricks strangely attaching the two buildings, with no real function. It could be a leftover from a previously existing building, possibly even the Sir John Young Hotel which was built in 1865, then demolished in 1915 following a fire in 1913.

Halfway through painting a small canvas
'Windsor Seafoods and Gloria Jean's Coffee '
2014 oil on canvas 28 x 36cm
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 Gloria Jean's Coffee is one of 3 little eateries in what apparently used to be a single building.

The other 2 are "Grill on George" and Stir Crazy" but aren't visible in these pictures.

Starting to paint 
TSW18 'Windsor Seafoods'
2014 oil on canvas 36 x 28cm
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I finished lunch and my first painting, then started another.

This time I used the same size canvas, but turned it around to paint a vertical study of Windsor Seafoods.

TSW17 'Windsor Seafoods and Gloria Jean's Coffee '
2014 oil on canvas 28 x 36cm
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One of the charming eccentricities of the architecture is that the levels of the crenellations of the roofline of the 2 outer buildings are lower than that of the centre building.

TSW18 'Windsor Seafoods'
2014 oil on canvas 36 x 28cm
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All 3 buildings have blue and cream striped awnings, which with the white canvas marquee, fluttering yellow and orange flags and blue and cream umbrellas of Windsor Seafoods, give the whole streetscape a jaunty air.

Related posts

Monet and Streeton meet Windsor Bridge

The Boiling Frog

The Phantom Toll House

Painting Thompson Square, Windsor

See my page in this blog of Windsor paintings

North Barangaroo Headland Park - The thin blue line

My stint as 'Artist in Residence' in my Studio on the top floor of the Sydney Ports Corporation's Moore's Wharf has given me a front row seat to paint the evolution of the former Wharf 3 at East Darling Harbour Wharves (formerly the Customs Shed) into the North Barangaroo Headland Park.

 MW16 'North Barangaroo Headland Park-
The 'Blue Line' from Moore's Wharf ' 
2011 oil on canvas 31 x 61cm

Enquiries about this painting

I painted this in September 2011 from the western window of my Moore's Wharf studio, which overlooks the construction site that will soon be the North Barangaroo Headland Park.
Apart from the recent Open day in June, Barangaroo would still probably be an unfamiliar location to most people,  unless they live or work locally.

In the background of these 2 paintings, Balmain is the headland on the left, Goat Island is on the right, and in the centre distance is Ballast Point in Birchgrove. Ballast Point, formerly a derelict refuelling depot, was refashioned into a park in 2008 by the Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority. I'd been lucky enough to be able to paint a series of paintings at Ballast Point just before its transformation.

Some of the structures which were around the Ballast Point fuel tanks are still in a rusting heap mouldering away behind the White Bay Power Station, and can be seen in a couple of paintings I created on site as Artist in Residence at the White Bay Power Station.

On the concrete of the former wharf, there's a blue line painted in a series of stylized curves and zig-zags , to divide land from sea. A little like the line painted on many Sydney streets for the marathon of the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games, which is still visible in the oddest places.

No Olympic athletes here, just the odd local jogger or dog walker.

It's also a weird echo of the seemingly abstract lines of different colours used in its previous incarnation as a wharf, to distinguish pedestrian walkways from truck parking zones.

On the southern side of the line the sign "Headland Park" has been painted on a green background. On the other side of the line "Sydney Harbour" has been painted in the now ubiquitous Barangaroo blue.
Soon after this was painted, excavation began.

According to the Barangaroo Delivery Authority, the coastline is intended to follow the contours of the shore as it was before European settlement.

Liiterally, "cut along the dotted line".

 MW28 'North Barangaroo Headland Park -
The caissons from Moore's Wharf '
2013 oil on canvas 36 x 46cm
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And, as you can see, they did.

This was painted in February 2013.

By this stage, the skin of the concrete surface has been pierced.

The caissons of the north end of the wharf are now exposed and full of water like a lot of tiny swimming pools.

The geometric symmetry of the wharf still remains, but mounds of sand and gravel hint at the new shoreline yet to come.
Soon the straight edge of the wharf will be broken, the caissons removed and the yellowblock sandstone will be carefully positioned around the new shoreline.

Related posts

Out from the storerooms- Paintings in the new galleries of the Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW

Barangaroo paintings in the Frances Keevil Gallery

Millers Point from the top of Harbour Control Tower

Lashed to the Mast - Plein Air painting, Moore's Wharf

Ozymandias

Every ruin is a reminder that all things are destined for oblivion.
I am both artist and historian; painting amidst the detritus of the industrial past, walking under rusty girders in the shadow of toppled giants.

'Under the Hammerhead Crane'

2014 ink pastel charcoal on paper 115 x 80cm

FINALIST : 2014 KOGARAH ART PRIZE

FINALIST : 2014 MOSMAN ART PRIZE
Available 

This is a mixed media painting of the Hammerhead Crane, which unfortunately is now being demolished, despite its iconic heritage status and distinguished history.
By now the "hammerhead" of the crane has been almost completely dismantled.
Instead of painting from the more familiar viewpoint of Mrs Macquarie's Chair opposite, I tackled the daunting bureaucracy of the Navy for permission to paint 'en plein air' on Garden Island itself.
I stood directly underneath the Crane and looked up into the top of the soaring structure, to capture its sheer scale. It is the embodiment of the 18th century concept of the sublime.
This painting has now been chosen as a finalist in both the Kogarah Art Prize and the Mosman Art Prize.

People are absent in many of my paintings, even though I trained as a figure painter and for 2 decades spent several days a week drawing and painting figures from life. I find that leaving out figures or relegating them to the role of "staffage" enhances the sense of the powerlessness of the individual against the inexorable forces of destruction and change. The crane itself is the best homage to the absent and largely forgotten workers who created the industrial landscapes that are now being destroyed.

GIHC13 'The Hammerhead Crane - homage to Piranesi' 

2014 ink gouache on paper 56 x 76cm
Available

Spaces that have a sense of history, place and meaning, find an echo in art history.

The safety nets resemble fan vaulting in a ruined Gothic abbey and the zig-zag tangle of girders and scaffolding recall Piranesi's images of the 'Carceri' or the wreckage of the dying Roman Empire.

The Hammerhead Crane was built during World War II, and symbolized industrial might, the march of progress and confidence in the values of Western civilization.
The mood of past triumphalism is now tempered by the present reality of scuffed textures, rust and tarnished metal.
Even as a victim of the slow death of de-industrialization, it had retained a poignant grandeur as industrial memento mori.
The last gasp of the Industrial Revolution, and of Sydney's Working Harbour.
In the words of Shelley's ruin-poem Ozymandias "Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Except that a future civilization would be extremely lucky to be able to find any trace of our heroic past.

Related posts

Under the Hammer

Hammerhead Crane

Patina - Beautiful Decay

Rust never sleeps : Painting the Hammerhead Crane Part 2

Painting the Icebreaker "Polar Star"

Strike while the iron is hot

Starting a small painting of an anvil,
one of the blacksmith's
basic tools of the trade
" Anvil" 2014 31 x 31cm oil on canvas
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At the ATP community heritage days on the 16th and 17th May, I had 2 exhibitions, one in Bay 1 and 2 of the Blacksmith's workshop and the other in the carriage displayed by the volunteers of 3801 limited, as well as painting throughout the blacksmith's demonstrations .
I am still recovering from being seriously injured not long ago, (fractured pelvis) so I had to be extremely careful. I was given a great deal of help by the volunteers and the management of the ATP, who gave me a room to store my paintings and easels, and a trolley to move them. I am truly grateful, as even just walking still causes me a great deal of pain.

" Anvil" 2014
31 x 31cm oil on canvas
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This time I kept the paintings fairly small and simple, so as to not put too much pressure on myself, while I'm still recuperating.
However, I have always meant to paint some of the heritage tools anyway. I have previously painted anvils as part of a larger, more complex painting, but it is a beautiful and evocative item in its own right.

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I had often painted Chris before in a variety of poses, but you have to be fast!
However, after I watch for a while I notice various stages of the process, and get a feeling for the timing and rhythm.
It's hard to decide on which of the hundreds of potential poses to choose to paint. I leave the arms in an unfinished state, as I can't decide on whether to paint him wielding a hammer or a pair of tongs.
Decisions, decisions.

Starting a painting of the blacksmith Chris.

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The blacksmiths of "Wrought Artworks" move quickly.

"Strike while the iron is hot" isn't just an old proverb - it's a way of life.
They must strike quickly, decisively and with force, however their movements must be controlled and accurate as well.
They also must work as a team and have awareness of who and what is around them.

Chris quenching chisels
2011-12 oil on canvas 152 x 122cm
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I exhibited some of my paintings of the Blacksmiths in a corner of their workshop, so that onlookers could compare the paintings with the real thing.

"Blacksmith" 2009 oil on canvas 100 x 75cm
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It gave viewers an opportunity to see parts of the workshop not visible to the public due to safety concerns.

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i displayed some of my smaller paintings and books of photos of paintings of other areas of industrial Sydney on a pair of old dusty workbenches.

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The ATP  has largely retained the old industrial ambience of the Eveleigh Railway Workshops.

All Fired up -the Blacksmiths

Eveleigh Railway Workshops"
2012 oil on canvas 91x 122cm
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Some more of my paintings of the blacksmiths were exhibited in front of an old signal box.

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The visitors on the first day were mostly retired former Eveleigh workers.

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However, there was a much larger and more diverse group of people attending on the Saturday.

I hope there will be another heritage day next year.

More Eveleigh paintings

Related posts

Macdonaldtown - A Station without a suburb

All fired Up

Scar Tissue

ATP Open Day - Saturday, 25 Feb 2012
Singing the body electric (sydney-eye.blogspot.com)
The village smithy (sydney-eye.blogspot.com)

En plein air with street cred (sydney-eye.blogspot.com)