Artistic life
Hi mates!
Today I am going to talk about the artistic life of Fremantle! Fremantle is a small city, but it is well known to have a thriving art scene, especially regarding music. I say “small” to underline the fact that, apart from restaurants and a few clothing stores, the streets are just full of art stores or exhibitions. Indeed in comparison, even this huge city just thirty minutes away named Perth is not as dynamic as Freo when it comes to the arts.
The street of the Moores Building Contemporary Art Gallery and Moores & Moores
First, there are at least ten places considered as galleries, such as The Finishing Touch Gallery and Merenda Gallery. There are also a lot of expositions like in Kidogo Art Institute, in the Moores Building Contemporary Art Gallery, and even in the Maritime Museum where a spacious room is dedicated to picture exhibitions.The Fremantle Art Centre is unique because there you can find exhibitions, art courses, and music.
A picture exhibition in the Maritime Museum of Fremantle
Fremantle is also teeming with various Aboriginal art shops like Aboriginart Indigenous Fine Art Gallery, Didgeridoo Breath, or Indigenart. Aboriginal people have an important role in the history of WA and that is why all those shops are there.
Didgeridoo Breath is a world music, and mostly Aboriginal music, shop
Also numerous music stores can be found in this small port city. First we can find an innumerable amount of records at the Record Finder and at Mills Record. Second we can find musical instrument shops such as the Music Centre of Fremantle, Monster Music, and many others.
Mills Records is full of Recors and can help you out if you need guitar strings
Speaking of Music, Fremantle is deemed to be the city of the birth of lots of music stars, among which the best known are John Butler (John Butler Trio) and Bon Scott (ACDC), who has a statue in Freo.
Bon Scott's statue on Fremantle fishing harbour
This is not due to hazard; Fremantle offers a lot of musical opportunities. First a lot of bars: Moore & Moore (only Jazz session), the Orient, Breaks, and Sail & Anchor offer to musicians the opportunity to play for patrons. Most of the bars ask musicians to come play during week evenings but not always—for instance Breaks welcomes a guitar player every single Sunday morning. There is even a club called Newport where bands are sometimes playing instead of a DJ.
The Record Finder and Breaks are next to each other as you can see here
Finally the best place, but also the most expensive place, to see a concert is undoubtedly Flybynight. It is a hall founded in 1986 that welcomes Australian artists and also international stars. Once again Fremantle is pretty small so Flybynight is not a huge hall with the most famous stars in the world, but in consideration of the size of the city, we can tell that art and music have a great importance here.
The Flybynight entrance
The city itself also organises a lot of events in the park across the street of our residence and almost every time a band is playing in the park. However the city attracts a lot of musicians mostly because you can perform wherever you want in the street, without permission, as long as you are not amplified. You can also meet street artists painting on the ground; lots of Freo’s pavements are covered with paint.
Wall art is widespread in Fremantle too
The best place for a busker is definitely in the Fremantle markets. You just have to play once in front of the market manager and if she says you are okay, then you put your name on the schedule for free and you can play! The market is separated into two parts: the food selling part on one side; the clothes/artistic part on the other side, and three buskers’ spots are spread all over the markets.
The main markets entrance; Sometimes street shows are performed here
It is open every Friday and weekends so, as a guitarist/singer, I generally play at least an hour each of those days and I can tell that here people are generous with buskers. Indeed you can make money fast, since people give to you because they like to hear music in the market. Lots of them also take time to just stop and listen to the buskers. So this is the main strength of Fremantle, I think: people. They want artists to stay in their streets, and mainly in their markets, so they do not hesitate to pay them for it.
My favorite guest, Brendan, and me busking in the markets
To finish this article I just want to say that now I also play for the Markets Bar once a week and I am just having a great time every single week. This proves my point; Fremantle people make the artists feel very welcomed whether it is in a bar or on the street. People like the artists, artists like what people do for them, so I believe artists will fill the streets of Fremantle for a while.