Barangaroo Headland Park
Barangaroo Headland Park from the Stamford on Kent, 2015 by Jane Bennett
This painting - named Barangaroo Headland Park from the Stamford on Kent - is a standout of the collection because of how new and modern it is, being painted in 2015, by Jane Bennett. It depicts Barangaroo, a coastal suburb in Sydney, from a hotel called the Stamford on Kent. The artist painted outside. This method of painting is called en plein air (from French). I chose this painting because of its bright and bold colours, the contemporary look and feel, and how the bricks on the shore are painted. There are a multitude of interesting things about what is portrayed in the painting and the painting itself, but before we delve into the intricate details, we have to have a look at Barangaroo’s history.
Barangaroo was an important site for Aboriginals even before European colonisation. The traditional custodians (the Cadigal clan) hunted and fished on the land, and Barangaroo was named after a powerful Aboriginal woman. During the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th, Barangaroo was transformed into a port. The Hungry Mile, as it was nicknamed by workers during the Great Depression, was where workers would try to find jobs, often failing to do so. This led to the construction of the Sydney Harbour Control Tower in the background in 1974, to give harbourside workers a higher vantage point of incoming ships, but when the port operations moved to Port Botany and Port Kembla, Barangaroo Port was virtually deserted. In 2016, the Sydney Harbour Control Tower was literally eaten by robots, and that’s why you probably haven’t heard of it. Jane Bennett, the artist, has an uncanny talent for painting things that are going to be demolished or redeveloped soon.
Can you see any people? If you look closely, there are three tiny people on the left side of the painting, near where the bricks are, but there are so many cars! Jane Bennett probably wanted us to go on a ‘treasure hunt’ to find these people. There are many colonial-style buildings in the painting, but the one in the foreground, right at the bottom edge of the painting, has two banners saying, ‘SAVE MILLERS POINT’ and ‘SAVE OUR COMMUNITY’. These banners are protesting against the demolition of the Sydney Harbour Control Tower and the redevelopment of the community. The shipping containers on the left side are small vestiges of the maritime history of Barangaroo. You can see that they are a part of the local surroundings and made to blend in as a feature. Look at the other side of the harbour. Can you see the blocky, prism-shaped buildings that look like they come from a video game? Can you see the small harbour on the right, home to a number of sailing ships? Can you see the small swatches of orange, houses on an impossibly green landscape? Imagine if you could step into the painting. What would you see, hear, smell, touch… what emotions would you feel? Can you feel that cool seaside breeze on your face?
This painting is clearly fun and blocky, but it holds much meaning and history behind it. The complicated past of Barangaroo, if we can uncover it fully, will help pave the path for a new future ahead.