City art on display

Selected artworks from the City of Fremantle's Art Collection are now being displayed, on a rotating basis, behind the service and information desk on the ground floor of the Walyalup Civic Centre.

The creation of the new hanging space improves access to the City’s art collection, which contains more than 1,600 artworks.

The first two artworks on display, entitled First Contact, are by Nyoongar artist Laurel Nannup.

Curator of the City Art Collection Andre Lipscombe said Nannup’s artworks are a great example of the City’s strong and growing collection of artworks by WA and Australian First Nations artists.

“These two works from Laurel Nannup connect with ideas about the moment of arrival and settlement by Europeans at Walyalup.

“Whadjuk Nyoongar people recognised the slow-moving sail ships approaching the shoreline as ghosts, returning ancestors, which must have been confronting.

“Laurel’s representation of native fauna and people at the mouth of Derbarl Yerrigan/Swan River does not foretell the beginning of the disenfranchisement and dispossession that is to come for Aboriginal people in WA,” Mr Lipscombe said.

Nannup is a senior Nyoongar artist who was born near Katanning in 1943. 

She is a member of the Stolen Generation and after raising a family, she studied art, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts (Fine Arts), from Curtin University in 2000.

She works primarily in woodcut and etchings but also known for her monumental five-metre cast aluminium native bird sculpture at Elizabeth Quay, Perth.

The City of Fremantle Art Collection was established in 1958.

The Collection contains paintings, prints, drawings, ceramics and sculpture that represent Walyalup/Fremantle’s local artists, art practice and cultural activities in the region.

Artworks from the City of Fremantle Art Collection are exhibited regularly at Fremantle Arts Centre, displayed around Walyalup Civic Centre and can be found online: City of Fremantle Art Collection | City of Fremantle