Wrought Iron today

These are the gates to the Royal Botanic Gardens when entering from the forecourt of the Sydney Opera House.

If you recall, last week I went to an exhibition at the foundry of Wrought-Artworks, down at the Australian Technology Park in Eveleigh, the old Railway Loco-workshops. I showed you a video of their work, and in it Guido spoke about their commission to 'renovate' the wrought iron in these gates.


On Sunday, I deliberately entered the Botanic Gardens via this gate, not through the forecourt, but up and over the Tarpeian Way at the rear of Government House. It is a glorious walk. And lo and behold, the workmanship in these gates is a joy! The little red 'engine' is a free service to move visitors around the Botanic Gardens. The water in the final shot is Sydney Harbour, specifically Farm Cove. There can be few better walks in Sydney than from these gates around to Mrs Macquries's Chair at the tip of The Domain.

This is my contribution to the Skywatch Friday Community.

En plein air with street cred

So, what does it mean 'en plein air'? It translates as 'in the open air' and is roughly equivalent to another French expression 'peinture sur le motif' meaning 'painting on the reason'. It is the opposite to painting in the studio either from memory or from a photograph. Monet, Pissaro, and Renoir gave it a go. I toured the sanitorium to which Van Gogh committed himself in St Remy in 1889, and there in the garden, amongst the immaculately trimmed lavender bushes, was a smattering of painters 'en plein air'. A jaw-dropping moment.


What Jane is doing here is not, strictly speaking, 'en plein air' but is most certainly 'sur le motif'. She is in the thick of it; she is painting real time; she is multi-tasking. She has to wear googles, for heaven's sake cause the guys get a smidge carried away with the sledge-hammers.

Can you see what I mean by multi-tasking? For starters, those two massive canvasses on the large easels, are not quite finished, so there are visions flashing around her head that she will incorporate later. Propped around her work easel and paint table, are a number of smaller canvases, between which she swaps as the session progresses. I envisage her eye-brain as a camera, click-click-clicking away with minute details of the whole. The trained mind registers the image, and she swaps over to the appropriate canvas ... or starts another one.

Guido and Chris are doing their own smithy thing, progressing a work, knowing that Jane is capturing their stance, their bearing, their actions. And knowing that, today, they have an audence (behind a perspex wall).

The village smithy

Yesterday, I introduced you to plein-air painter, Jane Bennett, working in the heritage bays down at the Australian Technology Park, in the suburb of Eveleigh. Today - and tomorrow - I shall have a crack at showing you what I was trying to get at with the expression 'the body electric'.


This is Chris, one of the artisans from Wrought Artworks, established in 1987 - who converted the old smithy area of the Eveleigh Railway Workshops and now maintain and work it under the aegis of the Australian Technology Park. There aren't many wrought iron foundrys left in Sydney. This one is worth a visit. The relationship with the ATP has not always been plain sailing, but wrinkles seem to have been ironed out. For those who would like to understand more, I have appended a doco about Wrought Artworks.