January 06 – Perth Art Walk

Perth has a lot of public art and we found an art walk map…so today is for walking the streets looking for art. 

Perth's started a major art project in 2017.  It consisted of the installation of 65 planter boxes and benches installed.  The boxes are all done by West Australian artists and are planted with native Australia plants.  We found a number of these boxes.

One of the more unusual pieces was "Dirty Deeds".  The artwork outlines on the sidewalk the two holding cells from the old Police Court.  And within the outlines were individual pavers that had the names and misdeeds of criminals held in the cells.  

We found a Mr. Davis who, in 1873, was detained for "Constantly roaming about from place to place and sleeping in the open air in the city."  Other than sleeping in the open the misdeeds sound familiar as we are certainly "roaming from place to place.

We also stopped in St. George’s Church.

In front of St. Georges was an art piece called "Ascalon".  It symbolizes the triumph of good over evil.  The pole is the lance of St. George, the white billow represents his cloak and steed and the base is the body of the dragon he slew.

There were also a lot of bronze statues.

One section of the art walk was through an alley that had a lot of very interesting graffiti art.

We stumbled upon these giant "paper airplanes" ...they weren't on the art walk map.  Don't know why, they were pretty interesting.

We also found 'Point Zero".  The plaque on the sidewalk at 1 Cathedral Square is the marker from which all distances to and from Perth are measured.  

The "Iconic" symbolizes a tree that was felled near here in 1829.  It commemorates the founding of Perth.

And our search for art afforded us the chance to see more of Perth.

It was pretty interesting to see a Tudor style building in a pedestrian mall in modern Perth. 

What an interesting day.