Incandescent squares of light stream through a tiny ferry’s windows as two dark sails tower over the vessel chugging across Sydney Harbour.
It is a typical scene from late Sydney artist Peter Kingston, whose work celebrates the sights and architectural symbols of the city’s harbour.
The sails are the unmistakable ones of the Sydney Opera House, or as he called it, “The Sacred House”, according to his sister Fairlie Kingston.
“I love the way … he just has these looming wings coming up out of the water,” Ms Kingston said.
“He studied architecture for about 13 years … he never practised, but he just revered the history of architecture.”
For 50 years from his ramshackle home studio in Lavender Bay, Kingston captured the icons of Sydney Harbour including the Opera House, Luna Park, and the Walsh Bay wharves — the latter of which he campaigned to save from developers.
“He had this undistilled vigour for rescuing doomed architecture, he strongly believed that the wharves were really important furniture in the history of the working harbour,” Ms Kingston said.
His legacy is being honoured after his death in 2022 after being diagnosed with cancer in 2019.
A free exhibition featuring 70 of the artist’s original works will go on display on Saturday until May next year at the NSW State Library.
Among the exhibition will be his hand-coloured etchings, his artist books, and a sketchbook from the hospital where Kingston was treated for cancer.
Celebrating nostalgia
Kingston’s reverence for nostalgia is captured best by a series of etchings of Sydney’s famous leisure spots he completed in the 1980s.
Taronga Zoo is filled with smiling visitors enjoying the zoo’s long-gone attractions: a miniature train, a monkey circus, and elephant rides.
Rowers, sailboats, and motorised dinghies mill around Watson’s Bay, a place just around the corner from his Parsley Bay stomping ground.
A lively Bondi Beach and a boat-filled Walsh Bay round out the collection.
“He’s really celebrating Sydney, his love for Sydney, but also sort of his nostalgia for old Sydney,” curator Elise Edmonds said.
“It’s things like the old ferries, the old buildings, the old Luna Park, he just loved those.”
Ms Edmonds said his work captured the beauty of the Sydney he knew, but also the sadness of the old things that were passing away, including the retired lady-class ferries that used to service the harbour.
“He described himself as an iconographer of the city,” Ms Edmonds said.
“He really wanted to tell its story.”
A ‘complete original’ artist
The curators of the exhibition are seeking to illustrate the story Kingston told, putting front and centre the colour of the nostalgia he captured.
Ms Kingston said her “wonderful” brother Peter’s creativity would likely never be seen again.
“Peter should be remembered as being a complete original,” Ms Kingston said.
“The like of Peter will never come again, sadly.”
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