City of Fremantle Art Collection

There is a Fremantle Permanent Art Collection, with more than 1400 items. It began with the Claude Hotchin bequest in 1958, had its own home in Pioneer Park 1978-87, but since then has been shown (if at all) at the Fremantle Arts Centre (at the former Asylum), under the direction of curator André Lipscombe (from 2002). Very little of it is usually on show, and often none at all. For example, there wasn't a single work from the Collection on show anywhere from the beginning of December 2017 to the end of January 2018. This series of photos shows the experience at that time of approaching and entering the room at the FAC which was intended (as the sign on the door shows) to be dedicated to the Fremantle Art Collection. It's not a large room. In my opinion there should always be a selection from the Collection in that room at all times.

I just checked again, 8 April 2019, and an exhibition of photographs of some kind is being mounted, and, as usual, there is not a single artwork from the permanent collection on show anywhere.

Another check in November 2019: prints everywhere, nothing from the Collection.

Ironically, the curator has just [November 2019] published a paper in the Fremantle Studies journal with the title 'Revealing the City of Fremantle Art Collection'. (He gave it as a paper to the Fremantle History Society as long ago as 2016.) I wonder why it's not called 'Concealing the City of Fremantle Art Collection'.

I'm not allowed by the copyright owner to put the paper on this site.

Update. There is a major exhibition at the Asylum (aka the Fremantle Arts Centre) called Panacea, 1 August - 20 September 2020, showing the work of 78 - mostly local - artists. It is a major show, drawn from the Fremantle Permanent Art Collection. Hooray!

References and Links

Lipscombe, André 2008, Fertile Ground: Fifty Years of the Fremantle Art Collection, Fremantle Press.

Lipscombe, André 2019, 'Revealing the City of Fremantle Art Collection', Fremantle Studies, vol. 10.

Freotopia

This page incorporates material from Garry Gillard's Freotopia website, that he started in 2014 and the contents of which he donated to Wikimedia Australia in 2024. The content was originally created on 7 January, 2018 and hosted at freotopia.org/arts/artcollection.html (it was last updated on 27 September, 2023), and has been edited since it was imported here (see page history). The donated data is also preserved in the Internet Archive's collection.