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.

Tuesday 9 June 2015

Vivid

I have an exhibition of paintings inspired by 'Vivid' now on display at the Four Seasons Hotel, 199 George Street, The Rocks, Sydney.
This hotel is almost 'Vivid Headquarters'.
It is only 100 metres from the best vantage points to view the spectacular lighting the sails of the Opera House, and the facade of the Museum of Contemporary Art.
Oil Painting inspired by Vivid festival- Nocturne of Sydney Harbour Bridge  from Lavender Bay painted by artist Jane Bennett
'Vivid - Sydney Harbour Bridge  from Lavender Bay (Rainbow lights)' 2015 oil on canvas 102 x 200cm
SOLD
Enquiries about other Sydney Harbour paintings
Brett Whiteley often painted the magnificent view from Lavender Bay. 
It looks even better at night, however I don't think that many other artists have painted nocturnes of Sydney Harbour.
Oil Painting inspired by Vivid festival- Nocturne of Sydney Harbour Bridge and lighting the sails of the Opera House  painted by artist Jane Bennett
'Vivid - Lighting the Sails-Luna Park on the Opera House'
2015 oil on canvas 152 x 122cm
Enquiries
Of all the images projected onto the sails of the Opera House, my favourite would be Luna Park.
It revives memories of the cheeky imagery by Martin Sharp, Peter Kingston and other larrikin ratbag artists who revered and helped defend Luna Park.

Oil Painting inspired by Vivid festival hanging in the Four Seasons Hotel The Rocks Sydney- Nocturne of Sydney Harbour Bridge  & Lighting the sails of the Sydney Opera House painted by artist Jane Bennett
Painting inspired by Vivid festival hanging
in the Four Seasons Hotel in The Rocks Sydney -
From left to right :
'Vivid - Lighting the Sails-Luna Park on the Opera House'
2015 oil on canvas 152 x 122cm
'Fireship' oil on paper 136 x 112cm
'Fireship' oil on canvas 61 x 91cm
Oil Painting inspired by Vivid festival- Nocturne of Sydney Harbour Bridge  from Lavender Bay painted by artist Jane Bennett
















The angle of the lighting on the painting has cast a faint rainbow as a halo above the span of the Bridge.
See more at the Ultimate Art Gallery
Four Seasons Hotel Sydney
199 George St, Sydney NSW 2000 Australia
P.O Box 1347, Crows Nest NSW 2065
Phone: +61 (4) 35 844 347
Email: info@ultimateart.com.au


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Thursday 28 May 2015

Palimpsest- Painting the abandoned Dunlop-Slazenger Factory

A palimpsest is a manuscript or piece of writing material on which later writing has been superimposed on effaced earlier writing.
The word is also used for something worked upon for one purpose and later reused or altered but still bearing visible traces of its earlier form.
I've recently been painting both inside and outside the abandoned Dunlop-Slazenger factory in Alexandria.
It has been abandoned for about 25 years, and has innumerable layers of graffiti ranging from the sublimely talented to the ridiculously inept.
Plein air oil painting in the abandoned Dunlop-Slazenger factory by industrial heritage artist Jane Bennett
Painting "Yellow Eye" oil on canvas 75 x 100cm
in the abandoned Dunlop-Slazenger factory





















 
The walls of the abandoned Dunlop-Slazenger Factory are a palimpsest - a fascinating mix of both creation and destruction.
Plein air oil painting in the abandoned Dunlop-Slazenger factory by industrial heritage artist Jane Bennett
Painting "Yellow Eye" oil on canvas 75 x 100cm
in the abandoned
Dunlop-Slazenger factory
29-04-15 Starting my first canvas of the Dunlop-Slazenger factory. I don't know what the image is of or what it's called, so I've christened it "Yellow Eye".

Plein air oil painting in the abandoned Dunlop-Slazenger factory by industrial heritage artist Jane Bennett
Painting "Yellow Eye" oil on canvas 75 x 100cm
in the abandoned
Dunlop-Slazenger factory















 

It's an insight into the way different generations alter the landscape of their ancestors.
Plein air oil painting in the abandoned Dunlop-Slazenger factory by industrial heritage artist Jane Bennett
Painting "Yellow Eye" oil on canvas 75 x 100cm
in the abandoned Dunlop-Slazenger factory






















 The factory is full of ghosts.
Plein air oil painting in the abandoned Dunlop-Slazenger factory by industrial heritage artist Jane Bennett
Painting "Yellow Eye" oil on canvas 75 x 100cm
in the abandoned Dunlop-Slazenger factory






















On the second day of painting this canvas, I changed the composition to include the bizarre cartoon characters on the upper walls.
There is a grotesque creature which is part baboon part wildebeast and part crocodile with wriggling worm-like hair, and two characters resembling demonic smurfs.
The glass has also been tagged, and the rays of the setting sun make it light up like the stained glass of Chartres cathedral.
Plein air oil painting in the abandoned Dunlop-Slazenger factory by industrial heritage artist Jane Bennett
Painting "Yellow Eye" oil on canvas 75 x 100cm
in the abandoned
Dunlop-Slazenger factory












 
 
The building is now being sand-blasted back to the original brick and will be redeveloped for apartments.
Plein air oil painting in the abandoned Dunlop-Slazenger factory by industrial heritage artist Jane Bennett
Painting "Yellow Eye" oil on canvas 75 x 100cm
in the abandoned
Dunlop-Slazenger factory












 
 
Such is progress, alas.
Plein air oil painting in the abandoned Dunlop-Slazenger factory by industrial heritage artist Jane Bennett
Painting "Yellow Eye" oil on canvas 75 x 100cm
in the abandoned
Dunlop-Slazenger factory












 
 
My extremely fashionable painting outfit. Lady Gaga will be copying this soon!
Plein air oil painting in the abandoned Dunlop-Slazenger factory by industrial heritage artist Jane Bennett
Painting "Yellow Eye" oil on canvas 75 x 100cm
in the abandoned
Dunlop-Slazenger factory












 
 
Painting in PPE (Personal protective equipment)
Plein air oil painting in the abandoned Dunlop-Slazenger factory by industrial heritage artist Jane Bennett
DS3 'Greeblies' -
Abandoned Dunlop-Slazenger factory'
2015 oil on canvas 122 x 122cm
 






















 
 
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Illuminated manuscripts and stained glass windows- Painting the Dunlop - Slazenger factory Part 2

Tuesday 17 February 2015

Banners, Millers Point

plein air oil painting of heritage terraces in Millers Point by artist Jane Bennett
 "Dalgety Terrace Millers Point"
2014 oil on canvas 46 x 61cm 
Collection : Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW
Enquiries about similar paintings 
The Harbour Control Tower looms ominously over the row of ramshackle terraces on the sandstone block wall of Dalgety Road.
Some of the houses sport protest banners :"Millers Point not 4 sale" "Our community is worth more than money"
Fortunately some of the banners were still there long enough for me to paint them, however, a few weeks afterwards the Housing NSW Millers Point Relocation Team had torn them down.
Housing NSW's Relocation Officers and their security and "cleansing" teams have been removing banners and photos of residents throughout Millers Point. The banners on the Garrison Church Rectory and on St Brigid's Church were removed in January 2015.  

plein air oil painting of heritage terraces in Millers Point by artist Jane Bennett
 "Dalgety Terrace Millers Point"
2014 oil on canvas 46 x 61cm 
Collection : Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW
Enquiries about similar paintings
Luckily I finished painting this canvas just before the roadwork started.
I was set up between 2 of the hideous new apartments built several years ago to replace a set of old Maritime Services Board warehouses.
plein air oil painting of heritage terraces in Millers Point by artist Jane Bennett
 "Dalgety Terrace Millers Point"
2014 oil on canvas 46 x 61cm
Collection : Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW
Enquiries about similar paintings
To add insult to injury,there is now a serious attempt to remove even the name "Millers Point" from the suburb- see Don't erase Millers Point Facebook Page
This canvas, which I exhibited in my solo exhibition "Under the Hammer" Frances Keevil Gallery 2014, was recently acquired for the collection of the Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW.
My canvases are banners that can never be torn down.

Monday 8 December 2014

On location - A Short film of my paintings

This is the link to view a short film of me painting on location in Millers Point and talking about the paintings in my solo exhibition "Under the Hammer"

Short film of "Under the Hammer" 

 While I was painting some tiny quick studies of terrace houses in Argyle Place in October-November 2014, I was filmed by Lachlan Bennett (no relation!). In the film, I speak about industrial heritage, the de-industrialisation of the city and my latest solo exhibition, 'Under
the Hammer'.

It's impossible to convey the same sense of wonder and beauty that I experience while painting on location, but it's worth a try.


plein air oil painting of terrace house in Millers Point by artist jane Bennett
"36 Argyle Place"  2014
 
oil on canvas 15 x 10cm
Available
Enquiries : janecooperbennett@gmail.com























As well as capturing me at work, Lachlan also visited the Frances Keevil Gallery to film an interview with me, and to view the paintings of Millers Point in the context of my previous work. Just before my solo exhibition opened, Lachlan visited High Street, Millers Point to film me painting the finishing touches on the large panorama of the Harbour Tower from High St.

Sunday 30 November 2014

Patina- Beautiful decay

plein air painting of the now demolished Hammerhead Crane on Garden Island by industrial heritage artist Jane Bennett
 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.

plein air painting of the now demolished Hammerhead Crane on Garden Island by industrial heritage artist Jane Bennett
GIHC18 'Girder, Hammerhead Crane
2014 oil on canvas 61 x 91cm 

FINALIST : 2015 HORNSBY ART PRIZE
Enquiries

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.
plein air painting of the now demolished Hammerhead Crane on Garden Island by industrial heritage artist Jane Bennett
 GIHC20 'Under the Hammerhead Crane'
2014 oil on canvas 61 x 91cm
 
Enquiries

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

Friday 28 November 2014

There goes the neighbourhood

Plein air oil painting by Industrial Heritage Artist Jane Bennett of Millers Point Barangaroo and the Harbour Tower from High st
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.

Plein air oil painting by Industrial Heritage Artist Jane Bennett of Millers Point Barangaroo and the Harbour Tower from High st
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.
Plein air oil painting by Industrial Heritage Artist Jane Bennett of Millers Point Barangaroo and the Harbour Tower from High st
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.
Plein air oil painting by Industrial Heritage Artist Jane Bennett of Millers Point Barangaroo and the Harbour Tower from High st
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. 

Plein air oil painting by Industrial Heritage Artist Jane Bennett of Millers Point Barangaroo and the Harbour Tower from High st
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.
Plein air oil painting by Industrial Heritage Artist Jane Bennett of Millers Point Barangaroo and the Harbour Tower from High st
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.
Plein air oil painting by Industrial Heritage Artist Jane Bennett of Millers Point Barangaroo and the Harbour Tower from High st
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.

Plein air oil painting by Industrial Heritage Artist Jane Bennett of Millers Point Barangaroo and the Harbour Tower from High st
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
Enquiries

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.

Plein air oil painting by Industrial Heritage Artist Jane Bennett of Millers Point Barangaroo and the Harbour Tower from High st
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?


Plein air oil painting by Industrial Heritage Artist Jane Bennett of Millers Point Barangaroo and the Harbour Tower from High st
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

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.


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