Love Freo

Reboot has resurfaced on  Lefroy Street.

You might remember him from such walls as 250 South Terrace…

Essex Street down by the Luna is starting to look like a bit of an art gallery…

Previously I had mourned the loss of The Gramophone on High Street but I saw its bastard child today.

Gramophone II: The Return

Small child having none of it, cover your ears.

Remember Fernando Pessoa? Well there’s five of him floating on the Luna’s wall:

How many is he?

Last but not least: thoughtful and iconic…

Harold Thomas' flag on the power box next to the cinema.

The WA government is in the process of amending its anti-graffiti laws to make it illegal to sell graffiti implements to minors.

These will be defined as:

(a) a can of spray paint;

(b) a pen, marker pen, or similar implement, that -
(i)    has a tip over 6 mm wide; and
(ii)   contains a fluid that is not water soluble and that is capable of marking a surface.

However this definition also includes calligraphy, pantone and copic markers and even crayons that school kids use. WTF.

This week new laws have been introduced to combat graffiti in WA. Offenders could face one to two years in prison, and $12,000 to $24,000 in fines. Retailers will also be targeted for selling graffiti tools like spray cans to kids with fines of up to $6000 for a first offence and $12,000 for subsequent offences.

I hope genuine street art which proliferates around Fremantle will not suffer.

I ♥ Stencils (Note the tag in the top right-hand corner we could do with a lot less of that.)

A bit more of this type of thing?

ReFace Art on the Streets

Condor Tower Car Park Event | Condor Tower Car Park Photos

Yes please…

See, its not about races
Just places
Faces
Where your blood
Comes from
Is where your space is
Ive seen the bright
Get duller
I’m not going to spend
My life being a color

Yes Michael.  Now this might not be Michael Jackson but that’s who I first thought of when I saw it. It might be Bernard Cribbins. This epic portrait is under the south side of the Stirling Bridge, which is probably the finest example of concrete bridge architecture in all of Freo.

Maybe it is Bernard Cribbins

A Fine Bridge

I spotted a couple of naked ladies around town recently, the first graffito on Cantonment Street in the small alley beside the dive shop:

Coy Naked Lady

The second in the toilets at Mojo’s of North Fremantle:

Not So Coy Naked Lady

Reds, now called Zeds, Fish and Chips on the edge of Freo is under new management and has a new look.

Zeds Fish and Chips

Flying the German Flag on a Penny Farthing Bicycle

Frank, Seeta and Vittorio

Zeds Fish and Chips

211 South Street,
Beaconsfield,
WA 6162.

Phone (08) 9335 143

This is quite a famous bit of stenciling on the toilets at Bruce Lee Reserve just heading out of Fremantle on South Street it’s been there since 2006. The block was repainted recently and it was thoughtfully preserved.

What’s interesting about this bit of stencil work is that the artist went back and added the ornithologist at a later date. You can see it on Google Maps Street View without the guy with the camera. The bird stencil also used to be near The Ledge at the Woolstores and across the road from Aubergine on South Terrace. The former has been long since painted over the latter I’m not too sure.

Graffiti Bruce Lee Park

The Flock at Bruce Lee Park

The Ornithologist at Bruce Lee Park

On South Terrace there is some interesting stenciling on the pavement it’s quite esoteric and I’ve been trying to get my head around it. The first one I’ve seen is in front of the Colonial Antiques & Tea House. The guy in the hat looks, to me, a bit like James Joyce: I’ve added in a little cameo for comparison. The text could be from one of his books but I’ve no idea what one or even if I’m on the right track here.

The Pavement Outside the Colonial Antiques & Tea House

Further down at the junction of King William Street and South Terrace there is this piece of text:

Forgive me, distant wars, for bringing flowers home.

King William and South Street

It’s an extract from the poem Under One Small Star by Polish Nobel Prize winning poet Wisława Szymborska:

My apologies to chance for calling it necessity
My apologies to necessity if I’m mistaken, after all.
Please, don’t be angry, happiness, that I take you as my due.
May my dead be patient with the way my memories fade.
My apologies to time for all the world I overlook each second.
My apologies to past loves for thinking that the latest is the first.
Forgive me, distant wars, for bringing flowers home.
Forgive me, open wounds, for pricking my finger.
I apologise for my record of minuets to those who cry from the depths.
I apologise to those who wait in railway stations for being asleep today at five a.m.
Pardon me, hounded hope, for laughing from time to time.
Pardon me, deserts, that I don’t rush to you bearing a spoonful of water.
And you, falcon, unchanging year after year, always in the same cage,
you gaze always fixed on the same point in space,
forgive me, even if it turns out you were stuffed.
My apologies to the felled tree for the table’s four legs.
My apologies to great questions for small answers.
Truth, please don’t pay me much attention.
Dignity please be magnanimous.
Bear with me, O mystery of existence, as I pluck the occasional thread from your train.
Soul, don’t take offense that I’ve only got you now and then.
My apologies to everyone that I can’t be everywhere at once.
My apologies to everyone that I can’t be each woman and each man.
I know that I won’t be justified as long as I live,
since I myself stand in my own way.
Don’t bear me ill will, speech, that I borrow weighty words,
then labor heavily so that they may seem light.

The artist had some other work on the pavements at the dog park on South Beach but bizarrely they had been painted over.

The Same Character as Above

However the artist retaliated (hurray) and stenciled a response.

Do you really think this looks better?

Why do you hate art?

I feel like I’ve missed a few links in the chain, even when I looked closely I couldn’t make out what was stenciled there originally.

Update 27/08/09: One of our readers (thanks Desmonda) enlightened us about who the guy in the fedora outside Colonial Antiques is…

…it’s Fernando Pessoa a contemporary of James Joyce, both rocked the fedora and tiny-mustache look as was the style at the time.

(See the comments on this post for more info about Fernando Pessoa).

Fernando António Nogueira Pessoa