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Pier Day

Artist Anastasia Bekos

Date1994

Object number00027417

NamePainting

MediumOil on canvas

DimensionsSight: 895 x 1205 mm
Overall: 1075 x 1385 x 63 mm, 6.8 kg

ClassificationsArt

Credit LineANMM Collection

Terms

DescriptionAn oil painting titled 'Pier Day' by Anastasia Bekos.The painting depicts the Chandris liner PATRIS coming into Port Melbourne with Greek migrant passengers. Attached to the ship by chain, is a little piece of Greece which represents the culture migrants bring with them to their new country. Families and friends wait on the wharf to welcome the new arrivals.HistoryAnastasia Bekos arrived in Australia from Crete on the PATRIS in 1966. She started naive painting in the mid-1970s in Melbourne and her series featuring PATRIS and HELLENIC document the migrant experience of coming to Australia on board the Greek shipping lines. The PATRIS was originally named BLOEMFONTEIN CASTLE and part of the Union Castle Line and built for the Britain to South Africa immigration run. Not wildly successful, the vessel was sold to the Greek Chandris Lines with the plan to use it for the Greece to Australia immigrant route. The company changed the name to PATRIS meaning 'homeland'. PATRIS was initially fitted out to accommodate 1000 tourist class passengers and 36 first class passengers and left Piraeus for Australia on its maiden run in 1959. Overall, PATRIS would make 91 trips to Australia over 16 years bringing thousands of Greek migrants to Australia. In 1975, in would be the last voyage to Asstralia, the Australian government chartered PATRIS to stay in Darwin as accommodation for victims of Cyclone Tracy which had decimated the city on Christmas day 1974. PATRIS served as a hostel type arrangement and left Darwin in November 1975, her immigration days behind her. Significance'Pier Day' captures the sentiments experienced by migrants to Australia. The new scenrey and sense of excitemewnt reflected by those on shore and the pieces of home