Baldivis
When I visited my cousin Betty Morris in Baldivis, a suburb of Perth, she stated that she didn’t know of any street art in her neighbourhood, the first morning I was there we went to her local shops to allow me to buy a SIM card, guess what we found in the local shopping centre.
This colourful mural was painted in June 2015 by Paul Deej Art and measured a massive 30m x 6m! It’s located at the Baldivis shopping centre and was created with help from students at Baldivis Secondary College, Tranby College and Living Waters Lutheran College.
Also in the car park of the Baldivis shopping centre were these incredible murals painted last November by Beastman & Kyle Hughes-Odgers, the artwork was commissioned for the “#mallsandwalls” public art project and the theme provided to the artists was “Connections: Uniting People, Place, and Environment”.
Fremantle
The town of Fremantle was a wonderful source of top quality of street art, perhaps due to it’s “hipster appeal”. Our first stop was at Craig’s camera shop on Market Street, as a photographer, I was very impressed by the range of products and services available and very surprised at the amount of film processing still carried out instore. Craig took us round to the town’s tourist information centre, and the staff there displayed a deep knowledge of the artwork in the area, which helped greatly in tracking it down.
The first place we visited was the wonderful huge mural on the East-West Design building, and could not help myself. I had to take some more and more photographs, so many I could fill this page.
The mural is the entire length of both sides of the building at South Terrace and Marine Terrace and has apparently become a tourist destination. It is the biggest artwork in Fremantle at approximately 86 Metres long.
I will only show some of the photographs I took and I have added a video by its creator.
The Norfolk Hotel, Fremantle
I found the following piece of artwork fascinating, from a distance it looks like a rather sad painting, it’s only when you get a little closer do you see the full effect of the work. The Portuguese artist, Vhils created this piece, which is a portrait of Dorothy Tangney, who was an Australian politician and the first woman member of the Australian Senate. The work was created by chiselling the portrait onto the wall of the Norfolk Hotel.
The Numbat
An incredible 25-metre Numbat (also called a banded anteater) mural in the car park opposite Fremantle Markets. Commissioned in 2011 by City Of Fremantle, the artwork was painted by Belgian artist ROA. I found it difficult to capture a decent photograph, due to the location and a busy car park, so I have included a stock image to show the complete work.
Random Wall Art around Fremantle
There were many other pieces of artwork around Fremantle, in bus shelters, on electrical sub-stations and on the sides of random shops and buildings, there are too many to show here, but I’ve added a couple to give to a taste of them.
Arcs d’Éllipses
By far the most interesting piece of artwork I found during my travels was in Fremantle.
Stretching from the tip of the Fremantle Town Hall clocktower to the foot of the Roundhouse, odd scraps of yellow appeared on the historic buildings of the High Street.
The pieces appear jagged, random and became denser towards the Roundhouse, at the end of the street. Climbing the stairs to the Roundhouse and looking down the street made the image suddenly becoming clearer and brought it all into focus, and made a misunderstood comment by the Tourist Information lady about being sure to go to the end of the High Street, make sense.
The six large yellow ellipses that appear flat against the three-dimensional landscape rise up over the street and look spectacular.
The work was created by Paris-based Swiss artist Felice Varini, who has produced similar geometric optical illusions around the world.
Jim's travels 