Open House Perth 2014 - Part 3

To end my visit of the Open House Perth, I joined a tour I had booked for 2pm, to visit some of the murals painted during the Form Public Street Art in April this year.

The two guides leading this tour of around 25 people were very enthusiastic, one of them had been involved with this project from the very start, having been the one that had to liaise with local government agencies, owners of suitable walls to paint, and was also the one that contacted some of the artists, who in turn contacted other artists to join this first Public Urban Art festival in Perth.

Although the tour took about one hour and a half, Form organizes "Public Urban Art Walks" every Thursday and Saturday, at a cost of $45, and duration of 3 hours. These tours will be held until end of November, so if you are in Perth you still have some time to join them!
Otherwise you also get a free map from the King Street Arts Centre/FORM gallery and do the tour on your own, for free. The tour gave us some background information about the artists, their painting process, their inspirations, etc.

In April, when the festival was on I wrote 2 posts about it, which you can read  by following these two links: 1) and 2).

This mural in a Murray Street car park was done by LAST CHANCE, a group of artists who had previously worked together, but had gone separate ways in 2010, and came together again for the Form festival. They now have individual projects.

Last Chance

Also in the same car park, this next mural was painted by GAIA, from the USA, at 25 years, the youngest of the artists, but certainly a very talented young man. 

He graduated recently from the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore. He did a lot of research about Perth's buildings and famous politicians and included a lot of that in his vast mural, called "Dementia" that goes from black and white to colour.

Here you can see the detail of the buildings which include Government house, State Theatre.

Here you can see the whole mural (taken from his web page)

 This was one of the highlights of the show when painted in April. The artist is ROA, a Belgium artist famous for his large animal painted on walls around the world. He usually paints animals that used to inhabit the urban areas and have disappeared due to human expansion.
The mural is also the highest at 24 metres and took 8 days to paint on the side of this public housing building adjoining the Murray St car park. The artist delineated the snake and used cans of paint with nozzles of various dimensions to paint the scales. Hard work!!

 
This very colourful mural in the car park, was a collaboration by BEASTMAN, from Sydney and VANS THE OMEGA, from Adelaide.

 

From the Murray Street car park, we then walk to Wolf Lane, which is between Murray str and Hay street, a hip lane full of bars and restaurants, and in a dilapidated garage there is a big collection of murals, some of which I have pictured in my first post about the Street Art Festival in Aprial.
This one above is by PAUL DEEJ,  and reminds me of "Red Riding Hood", but it has something to do with the media, can you see the earphones?

This next one, a pasted mural by JETSTONORAMA, an African American Doctor who works with the Navajo people and has always been interested in street art.

Above is another mural from ROA, (see Snake above), this time a Ringtail Possum (marsupial).

This next one is a futuristic work of art by PIXEL PANCHO from Italy, and it was inspired by his trip to the Pilbara, an area north of Western Australia, where some of the artists were taken to paint, to meet Aboriginal folk and to get inspiration. 
Here the red dry earth on this "Driverless trains" was certainly modeled on the "Mars" red earth of that area. He is very fond of painting robots.

Can you see all the details in this picture? 

 This next one from ALEXIS DIAZ from Puerto Rico, an artist known for his intricate animal designs blended with human forms. Also in Wolf Lane, this mural of a Dragon took 2 weeks to paint and is among the best street art murals of 2014. Apparently he was painting right up to the time he had to leave for the airport...
The details are apparently painted with brushes, no wonder it took so long...

Details of Dragon's tail

By using an app on your mobile, this interactive mural changes colours. By artist and activist JORDAN SEILER, from the USA, founder of the Republiclab projects. This is next to the Secret Garden Cafe in Wolf Lane.

 We ended our tour of Wolf Lane with a STORMIE MILLS mural designed for "selfies". 
Can you see the hands? Here we have my daughter in law who accompanied me during this Open House day.

I really enjoyed the tour, even though I had seen most of these works in April, but I got to know a bit more about the artists and their personalities. Also the fact that it was a free tour was great.

And so ended my first and only day of this year's Open House Perth, hope you enjoyed the tour as well.

Have a great weekend!

Open House Perth 2014 - Part 2

After my visit to 108 St. George's Terrace, it was time for a quick visit to the second location, this time to a small apartment in a building called Rialto Terrace in Palmerston street, in an enviable location within walking distance of the city centre.

The lovely gate with apartments on each side of the walkway

The building was a former clothing factory in the 1920's, later transformed into small apartments - on one side with 3 floors (2 bedrooms) and on the other side 2 floors (1 bedroom).
They are modelled in the New York style loft apartments, with the high ceilings which give the apartments a sense of space and lots of light.
These conversions are becoming quite fashionable in the Fremantle area as well, with the remodelling of old warehouses and factories. 
This particular apartment belongs to a lady who is the national president of the Design Institute of Australia (DIA), and accordingly very artistically decorated as you can see in these photos.

The walkway separating the entrances on the left and right of the building

The walkway - looking up

The little entrance courtyard - just enough for some greenery

The full wall of windows in the lounge looking through to the courtyard

The lounge with double height ceilings and all that light!

Here you can see part of the tiny kitchen and dining room beyond and another small courtyard

The bedroom with build in robes and windows above with the soaring ceiling. There was an en-suite next to it

The tiny courtyard at the rear by the dining room, seen from the bedroom

The tiny rear courtyard

I really loved this tiny apartment, it could be an ideal place for a single person or a young couple who wanted a simpler lifestyle, but I rather prefer having more space, I have too much junk right now...

What do you think? Would you enjoy living in this type of apartment and have the opportunity of living within walking distance to all amenities in the city, or rather live in a bigger house in the suburbs?  

Open House Perth 2014 - Part 1

For the third year, Perth hosts it's "Open House" this weekend,  1st and 2nd of November.
This year the have about 70 public and some private places open to the public, so that we can see behind the scenes.
This year I've only been able to go on Saturday, so we have another event on Sunday, so I've only been able to see a few places that piqued my curiosity and that I hadn't visited last year.

I had planned to visit about 7 destinations, but with booking times for some venues, queues, travel times between venues, etc, I only managed to visit 3 of the chosen places.

I think it was a bit silly of me to take the car, having to find parking, etc, but I had some places to visit that were outside the CBD (central business district), so it made sense at the time, but it was a bit of a time waster, as well as extremely expensive!! 
I can't believe one of the parking garages charges $20 for the first hour on the weekend (cheaper during the week)!!! 
So next year I will be using the train and buses again.


My first visit was to -108 St George's Terrace, in the city centre, previously known as "West bank tower" until 2009 when the bank vacated the 20 floors they occupied.

108 St George's Tce - old and new blend

This high rise (3rd tallest in Perth) built behind an old brick facade that was saved from demolition by public protest, was when completed in 1988 the tallest in Perth.
Only the outside walls and the main foyer now remain in the original brick, and behind it the glass facade rises to 52 floors.

In 1980, when Alan Bond  planned the redevelopment of the site, the council approved it on the condition that "The Palace Hotel" remain in operation (part of the brick building).
This council ruling was later changed to allow the Bank to occupy these premises when they bought part of the investment during building.

The main reception of the building - note the huge painting

The brick house inside the modern rooftop

The glass rooftop over the main entrance to the building

Due to the huge queues waiting to go to the 51st floor, where the views are, we opted to take the tour of the 27th floor, which is occupied by "Savills", a property development and management company.
We weren't allowed to photograph the offices, just the views, but this is actually of their foyer that was on the net.

View of foyer of Savills on the 27th floor

The following 3 photos are of the site before and during construction of the new building.

Of course the views are amazing, probably not as great as the ones on the 51st, but what I wanted to see what an areal view of the "Elizabeth Quay" project (a Youtube video at bottom of post). They had a river view and a back view, and what a massive office kitchen they had! I'm jealous, I wish we had 1/4 of that in my clinic, and of course I wouldn't mind working in such a beautiful environment either...

The works on the new river front development - Elizabeth quays

The Swan Tower and the ferry station to South Perth (across the Swan river)

The BHP Billiton building, the highest in Perth

Can you see the gardens atop these building? Very cool.

More constructions going on in Perth

Part of the brick structure with iron-work balconies and the glass facade behind

Hope you enjoyed this first visit and come back soon to see my other visits from today.

Check this Youtube video about the Elizabeth Quay project

If you follow these links you can read the 5 posts I wrote about my visits to  "Open House"  in 2013.


1 - http://sami-colourfulworld.blogspot.com.au/2013/11/open-house-perth-2013-council-house.html

2 - http://sami-colourfulworld.blogspot.com.au/2013/11/open-house-perth-2-spacecubed-and.html

3 - http://sami-colourfulworld.blogspot.com.au/2013/11/open-house-perth-3-qv1-building.html

4 - http://sami-colourfulworld.blogspot.com.au/2013/11/open-house-perth-4-central-park-building.html

5 - http://sami-colourfulworld.blogspot.com.au/2013/11/open-house-perth-5-bishops-gardens.html

Birds in my garden and Loquat liqueur

We're halfway through Spring, with some warm days, a couple of very hot days and some rainy days in-between.

This year due to the early warm weather, our Loquat tree (also know as Chinese Plum or Japanese Plum) next to our driveway in our front garden was full of fruit, but we had lots of fruit fly too, which meant my husband removed and threw away a lot of the fruit.

I'm not a great fan of the fruit, and in our house only my husband eats eat, so we give most of the fruit to a couple of friends that love it. This year I also made a Loquat Liquour with the fruit, and another one with the Loquat pips.

We've also had  Rainbow Lorikeets picking on the fruit that is higher up in the tree, and they aren't at all scared of people, even when you shoo them away, they just carry on merrily eating away...The cheeky buggers! They feed on fruit and flower nectar, so it's no surprise.

We also get a lot of doves, but mainly in our back garden. 

There's a couple who seem to reside in the lemon tree. They had lost a little baby that fell from a very precarious nest during some high winds a couple of months ago, and then I hung an empty coir basket in the tree and now they seem to be using it as their nest. Very sweet!

They are quite curious when we're working in the garden and seem to stick around looking at us, although if we get too close they fly away...

Can you see the dove peeking through the lemon leaves?

The visiting Dove couple

Another cute bird that visits our garden is the Willie Wagtail. This small bird wags the tail swinging from side to side as if dancing. They are very friendly, and they love to tease my cats and then fly away as soon as they see them moving...

And of course I can't forget the Australian Magpie. We have lots of them in the park across the street, but they also come into our front garden. They are very territorial, but usually have a good relationship with humans. During their breeding season from August to October, they can become aggressive and are know to attack pedestrians and cyclists.

Just last week we heard kids screaming and came out to see some kids in the park  across the road being chased by the magpies. The postmen around Australia are frequent targets!

My cat "Fluffy" on top of the postbox looking at the Magpies in the driveway

I don't know the name of the birds in the photos below, but they're also frequent visitors of the lemon tree in the backyard.

Can you see the bird on a branch under the flower pots?

I wish you a wonderful weekend and leave you with the recipe of the Loquat liqueur I made just in case you happen to have some loquats around. 

Loquat Liqueur

1 kg loquats

4 or 5 lemons

700 gr sugar

1,8lt vodka

Wash fruit and dry with a cloth. Put whole fruit in a wide mouthed sterilised jar.

Peel lemons and remove the pith (white part) and pips. Cut lemons into into thin slices and add to jar. Add sugar and vodka to jar until all fruit is covered.

Close lid and keep in a cool  dark place for a minimum of 3 months. I've kept mine in the fridge.

You can then filter the liqueur onto another bottle and discard the fruit.

Serve cool.