ZINONGO FOR COLOURFUL BATHROOMS

 

 

Tired of your boring white bathroom basin, or in the process of renovating or building a new house?

Go check out the gorgeous colourful basins at the Zinongo Gallery on Lefroy Road in Beaconsfield and meet the charming potter Njalikwa Zongwe.

Njalikwa creates many more things than basins, so go and have a browse this weekend!

Roel Loopers

FREMANTLE ARTS CENTRE RE-OPENING!

 

 

Here a very welcome message from Jim Cathcart, the director of the Fremantle Arts Centre:

“I am pleased to let you know Fremantle Arts Centre re-opens to the public on Monday 15 June.

In the galleries we are presenting Revealed 2020: New and Emerging WA Aboriginal Artists and Tim Leura Tjapaltjarri in WA: Hunter Dreaming. Both exhibitions will run until Sunday 26 July.

Our shop FOUND and reception also re-open on Monday 15 June, while Canvas Café and FAC’s beautiful grounds are already open. Meanwhile, FOUND online is open for business 24/7 at https://shop.fac.org.au/

In relation to FAC’s courses, we will present a July Kids’ School Holiday Program, with a full Term 3 Adults’ Program to follow. The classes, dates and booking information will be announced as they become available.

From Mon 15 June – Tue 30 June we will be open 10am–4pm, 7 days.

We will, of course, be implementing all the necessary public health protocols and social distancing measures that have become common over the past few months.

I look forward to seeing you soon, back at FAC.”

– Jim Cathcart, Director

To read Jim’s full statement visit https://www.fac.org.au/2020/06/fac-opening-monday-15-june/

AUTUMN LEAVES CREATIONS

 

 

Fallen leaves always create a sense of nostalgia in me. My mind goes back to the autumns and winters I spent in the Netherlands and Germany, and the thick carpets of fallen leaves in the forests, and that rustling sound the dry ones make when one walks through them.

I am a bit of an old romantic, so this morning on my way to Chalkys cafe at the Roundhouse I took these two photos in High Street.

Looking for beauty in everything makes life very special.

Roel Loopers

FREO PODCAST SUPPORTING LOCAL ARTISTS

 

Fremantle Arts Centre has launched a new series of podcasts aimed at promoting and supporting local artists and musicians during COVID-19.

The podcast ‘FAC Chats’ involves FAC Events Coordinator David Craddock and other staff at the Arts Centre interviewing musicians, visual artists and craftspeople in an effort to connect them and their artwork with the Fremantle community while they are unable to physically show their work.

In addition to providing an insight into artists’ work, the episodes provide a way for the community to support artists by purchasing their work, recordings, merchandise or tickets to rescheduled events.

The first two episodes are interviews with musicians whose gigs at FAC were affected by COVID-19.

The first episode features musicians Tom Fisher, Grace Newton-Worsdworth, Justin Fermino and Brian Kruger discussing how COVID-19 is severely disrupting concerts as we know them and how WA musicians are dealing with the downtime.

The second episode features Triffids members ‘Evil’ Graham Lee and Robert McComb telling the story of how a series of unreleased demo recordings by Robert’s brother and Triffids’ frontman David McComb were uncovered and bought to life by his dear friends as part of the brand new album and live show ‘Truckload of Sky: The Lost Songs of David McComb’.

In Episode 3, released today, Curator André Lipscombe selects six significant and diverse works out of the more than 1500 artworks in the Fremantle Art Collection as part of a virtual gallery talk.

You can subscribe to FAC Chats on iTunes, Spotify or Google Play or listen to it on the Fremantle Arts Centre website.

FREO UPSIDE DOWN UNDER

 

 

In difficult times it is even more important to try to see life from all perspectives, so since this photo of the Fremantle Fishing Boat Harbour has so many fans I decided to turn it upside down, and I believe it has even more impact than when it is shown the right way.

I leave it to the philosophers among you to argue if reality can be surreal. ;>))

Roel Loopers

SOUTH FREMANTLE BABY FACE ART

 

 

Great art mural at South Terrace in South Fremantle, close to the Douro Road intersection. Go and have a look?

Roel Loopers

LOOPY’S GOOD OLD DAYS

 

 

Although my car is parked in a secure carpark, some idiots still went through it the other night and even left the boot wide open. I then realised I had left my old portfolio with pre-digital photos in there, so went for a bit of nostalgia trip and fondly remember the good old days as a professional photographer.

The series of blue sky photos was for my very first exhibition in the late 1980s at the Delaney Galleries in Beaufort Street in Perth. I also took that show to the Lajos Keresztes Gallery in Nuremberg, Germany. It was disappointing that only two works were sold in Perth, but the German show was a sell out on the night, so that was fantastic.

The other image is of two of a series of posters I shot on East Timor for Shell, as part of their rebuilding project.

I absolutely loved being a professional photographer for almost 50 years and never regretted it. Finding beauty in the ordinary was my motto.

Roel Loopers

 

COLOURS OF FREMANTLE

 

 

Rediscovering the city we live in is a very good way of dealing with the coronavirus social restrictions. I took these photos on my way to food shopping at the Woolstores this morning.

Roel Loopers

SHAC MENTORING FOR FEMALE ARTISTS

 

 

SHAC Incubate – Established women artists mentoring emerging female artists May 1-3.

Sustainable Housing for Artists and Creatives (SHAC) is a unique creative community space in Fremantle. Following the success of SHAC’s inaugural event SHACtivate! 2019, SHAC Incubate artists programme has been adapted, following government safety guidelines, and will now present a series of online activities over the first weekend in May, as a positive force for our community in these difficult times.

Online exhibition is on May 1 at 6pm, and online workshops&talks on May 2 and 3.

 SHAC Incubate artists programme celebrates the land we live on, the communities who live here now, and those who have lived here in the past.

 Using a grant awarded by City of Fremantle in late 2019 SHAC is able to showcase emerging and established female talent responding to the current pandemic situation. Presenting a platform where women’s art and voices can be represented, views shared with others and the conversation expanded about how artists can survive in the arts right now.

 The SHAC Incubate artists programme includes three weeks of collaborative enquiry engaging with different minds and art forms, with participants learning more about each of the SHAC & associate artists’ backgrounds, experiences and perspectives. New cross-artform works will be developed by each mentor and emerging artist mentoree.

 Creative workshops will be delivered online for artists and the general public; performances will be streamed live via the SHAC Facebook Group  and an exhibition curated of the collaborative work produced and displayed on the SHAC website virtual online gallery at https://www.shacfreo.com/shac-virtual-gallery.html .

 

A CIVIC CENTRE IS NOT AN ARTS CENTRE

 

 

Brian Shearsmith, a committee member of the Fremantle Society, takes offense in a letter in the Fremantle Herald today to my personal opinion about the City of Fremantle art collection. Shearsmith claims that my opinion here on Freo’s View earlier this week, is an insult to the artists that created them(sic).

I wrote my article after the Fremantle Society committee had unanimously voted to defer the construction of the new Walyalup Civic Centre at Kings Square and instead turn it into an art gallery that would display the City’s art collection.

It is rather hypocritical of a committee member of the Fremantle Society to claim my opinion is an insult to artists, when the Society has been insulting architects and developers for many years, with derogatory remarks about the design of proposed and constructed buildings.

In the meantime the civic centre is developing well, with the main entrance at Kings Square now becoming prominent, as these photos I took this morning show.

Roel Loopers