Trevor Dickinson is showing us all the things we missed

Hello Newcastle: Trevor Dickinson with a print of the image that appears in The Book of Newcastle. Pictures: Simone De Peak

Artist Trevor Dickinson is one of Newcastle's favourite sons, even if he's a foreigner.

An Englishman by birth, Dickinson moved to Newcastle in 2002 with his wife, Jo. They've raised their two girls here, Emma and Lucy.

After spending his first seven years here designing textiles and graphics for UK and Sydney fashion houses, he refocused his artistic vision and began to draw sketches of Newcastle sites and landmarks. That change in career path, under the brand Newcastle Productions, has led him to becoming the city's most prolific creator of artworks about the city, and commercialising them in tea towels, greeting cards, prints, playing cards, magnets and zines.

Now, he's produced a book featuring almost 400 of his artworks of Newcastle, and a few words about his Australian journey. The book, humorously called The Book of Newcastle, is available for $60.

Dickinson's artistic fingerprints are all over the city, featured in murals in the Newcastle Beach tunnel, Merewether beach tunnel and on the side of the Newcastle Museum. The book shows the murals, the zines and several new works that he finally got around to drawing during the pandemic.

His style is distinct, and the focus is always on man-made elements, from letterboxes to buildings, signage, street furniture and icons.

The book also features colour spreads of the Merewether Ocean Baths, Ozzie the Mozzie, ChristChurch Cathedral, NeW Space and the Newcastle Light Rail.

"Grayson Perry said the job of an artist was to point things out ["My job is to notice things that other people don't notice," was the exact quote]," Dickinson says. "That's the sort of thing I'm doing - 'look at this!'"

Dickinson was a big fan of the Queens Wharf Tower, which he has captured in the book. It's one of many elements that did not survive the politics of time. "I was one of the few people who really liked it, I thought it should stay," he says.

"I try to find alternative ways of looking at things," he says. He loves big skies, he's very particular about how light plays on surfaces, and he always keeps in street furniture.

I try to find alternative ways of looking at things.
Trevor Dickinson

"When I first came here, there were lots of pictures of beaches, They were outward looking, not looking at the city where people were living," he says.

Dickinson's sharp eye and sense of humour constantly show in his work.

He has a spread in the book on several of the Stag & Hunter Hotel's billboard signs through COVID with song lyrics ("Who's gonna make the gravy? Bet it wont taste the same").

There are all 100 letterboxes of his project to find letterboxes with numbers from 1 to 100, all in Newcastle.

There's the quaint Tarro Quality Meats building (with its window sign "eat my meat").

There is the Mayfield "whitegoods graveyard" .

And structures that evoke characters (the phenomenom has a name - pareidolia).

"So many things I drew because I knew they were going. I wanted to get them while they were still around," he says.

And like people, sometimes you don't know notice things until they are gone.

There is a drawing of the former Newcastle "roundhouse" administration building. Dickinson says, "Right from the start, when I did the council office, I had people saying, 'I always thought that was ugly until I saw your drawing.' Yeah, that's what I do. Next time they see it, they might see it through different eyes."

The pandemic provided Dickinson, who works from his home studio in New Lambton, a chance to catch up drawing some images from photographs of buildings he had captured over time, and the time to design the book.

He's got several projects on the go, including a book for Canberra (where he has famously drawn all 580 of the city's bus shelters).

newcastleproductionsart.com

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