News

Meet Erin Coates. Erin is a massive part of our exhibitions team and an artist in her own right. As our Special Projects Coordinator, not only does she curate, install and manage unbelievably large art projects – she also has a passion for climbing public art sculptures across the globe. We got the inside scoop on what drives her ahead of her upcoming exhibition Open Water opening at Moana Project Space on Friday 7 July.

Read the latest edition of Fremantle Arts Centre's What's On, covering exhibitions, events and art courses taking place from July to September 2017.

In Fremantle Arts Centre’s exhibition I WAS HERE the world is flipped upside down, long held beliefs are disproved and fact replaces fiction as seven artists grapple with what’s real, imagined or forgotten over time. Comprising photographic and sculptural works, I WAS HERE is a fascinating commentary on history itself and our relationship to the past.

Walking through FAC’s grounds you might find Artist in Residence Sanne Koelemij creating gigantic colour fields across her handmade canvases. Hailing from Canberra, Sanne uses everything from cardboard to coffee cup lids and perspex, found during dumpster diving, to construct her large-scale abstract landscapes. Each final work and collaged ‘drawing’ is a kaleidoscopic example of Sanne’s ability to place colour into a joyful, cohesive whole. With an incredible eye for colour balance, Sanne can not only see colour but hear it through the neurological phenomenon synaesthesia.

For everyone who’s ever broken a favourite cup, plate or precious ceramic sculpture, Artist in Residence Stephanie Hammill (WA) can relate. Stephanie’s ceramics practice is built around broken, distorted ceramics in need of some serious help or just a little bit of love. After studying the traditional Japanese repair technique Kintsugi, Stephanie has been carefully and laboriously repairing broken ceramics and collecting their stories along the way.

Fremantle Arts Centre presents the world premiere of internationally acclaimed artist Ian Strange’s latest exhibition ISLAND. Born and bred in the Perth suburbs, Strange is known for his subversive, site-specific interventions on suburban houses. Based in New York since 2009, Strange returns home to debut his most in-depth exploration of home. Created in the wake of the American housing crisis, ISLAND offers a provocative and unsettling look at our deep psychological relationship to home.

Brit Award-nominated three-piece London Grammar return to Australia for a massive national headline tour this September. The tour will see Hannah Reid, Dan Rothman and Dot Major perform shows across four states in some of the country’s most esteemed venues and arenas, including Fremantle Arts Centre.

Melbourne-based video artist Claire Robertson returns to the remains of the temporary Pilbara mining camp that she and her family called home during the 1980s in her upcoming exhibition Far From Here. Drawing on colonial narratives and following the collapse of the Australian mining boom, Claire has created a haunting installation of cinematic proportions. Shot on-site, she’s captured the uninhabited demountable villages as they sit in stark contrast to the vast, endless horizon. Claire gave us an insider’s take on life in a mining camp ahead of the exhibition opening on Friday 26 May.

Meet Layne Dhu-Dickie, the youngest artist to ever be showcased in the Revealed Exhibition: New & Emerging WA Aboriginal Artists. Revealed features the next generation of Aboriginal artists from some of the most remote locations in WA, alongside regional and metropolitan artists. Spinifex Hill Artists’ Layne is 12 years old and the creative brains behind Captain Hedland. The comic book series charts the adventures of the valiant Captain Hedland and his efforts to fight drug and alcohol addiction in Layne’s home of Port Hedland. Revealed runs until Sunday 21 May.

Art lovers will be generously rewarded at Fremantle Arts Centre’s winter exhibitions which span elegant painting by revered Fremantle realist Marcus Beilby; otherworldly fleshy figures by internationally acclaimed artist Jess Johnson; the in-your-face, street-inspired style of local duo Trevor Bly and Patrick Doherty; and a diverse showcase of contemporary Australian video art.