Zuza Zochowski painting at Port Kembla harbour. Photo: Supplied.
For a year, award-winning Wollongong artist Zuza Zochowski traded escarpment vistas for coal piles and cargo ships, setting up a camp chair in Port Kembla’s Inner Harbour to paint the industrial heart of the Illawarra in watercolour.
The result is a striking new body of work that captures the raw beauty — and uneasy contrasts — of steel, smoke and sea.
It was during 2025 when Zuza first changed her painting locality from the Bellambi Point view of tankers lining the horizon, to where they berth in the inner harbour.
Returning to the same spot throughout the year with the camp chair and her portable easel, she captured large cobalt blue cargo ships, growing mountains of coal, and grey stacks that puffed out titanium white clouds with only the company of fisherfolk, seagulls and steelworkers on their lunch breaks.
The culmination of that year for the Georges River Art Prize 2025 winner and Wollongong Art Prize 2025 finalist has been a series of paintings to be showcased in an exhibition at Damien Minton Gallery in Surry Hills from 4-14 March.
“I became a little obsessed with the industrial area that is positioned between the ocean and the Illawarra Escarpment,” she said.
“The grand scale of the buildings, machinery and cargo ships demanded a presence among the surrounding ancient ecological formations.”
Zuza’s previous work has focused on “plein air” or outdoor subjects such as the Illawarra escarpment or her local suburban architecture, before she decided to turn her eye to what may be usually considered the “unlovely”.
She said the subjects were captured quickly and in multiples on grey textured paper, with grey a tone to “set the scene and perhaps the overall feeling”.
“I’m constantly interested in showing contrast within my environment,” she said.
“The contrast of human structures and organic shapes, but also the contrasts of what I feel about this area.
“I’m in awe about our human structures and what we’ve built, but I also know that it’s not working well for our environment and that our dominance over the environment is something that does affect me, and is affecting me more and more.”
Due to the nature of the project, Zuza was often exposed to extreme weather conditions, which caught the attention of those in the vicinity.
“For shelter from the drizzling rain, I was given a golf umbrella by a regular visitor,” she said.
“Contract workers provided positive feedback over my shoulder and people, cruising, contributed to my view as they stopped to yell out the window ‘watchya paintin’ love?’”
She said late lunchers shyly walked past or stopped to admire and speak about her frequent visits, while engineers would explain to her what the smoke and noise was occurring behind the fenced-off areas.
Zuza has been a finalist in numerous prizes since 2004 and has collections at Artbank, University of Wollongong, Hurtsville Council and in private collections.
The Port Kembla Plein Air series by Zuza Zochowski will be shown at the Damien Minton Gallery in Surry Hills, Sydney from 4-14 March.
