IF I had to describe Fremantle to someone, I’d probably just show them one of Ange’s Fremantle Herald cartoons. They are a cryptic melting pot of satire, new age baloney, politics and sunshine. Sometimes the cartoons are so left-field, our editor is left scratching his head, but they always align with the paper’s sightly subversive…

WHILE some of us are vowing to lose a few kilos in 2025, artist Andrew Nicholls is busy creating a new divinatory system based around Western Planetary Magick. It will take him years to complete the 70-card cartomancy deck, but he’s showcasing the initial ink and watercolour drawings at his new exhibition The Majestical Firmament.…

BOB DYLAN in the mid-1960s personified the political commitments and feelings of his generation.  That now-grey-haired generation flocked to the Luna on SX special preview screening to see Timothée Chalamet star in the project that took him, as producer, more than five years to get to the screen.  Chalamet does not disappoint.  He has Dylan’s…

MELISSA Clements’ latest exhibition is like Caravaggio crossed with a Netflix murder mystery. Most folk associate oil paintings with Renaissance classics like the Last Supper and the Mona Lisa, but 26-year-old Clements has taken the art form and given it a 21st century twist – exploring issues like female oppression, liberation and violence. There’s a…

AFTER 40 years in the cosy bosom of public service, former punk rocker Neil Fernandes has emerged from his creative cocoon and is enjoying an Indian summer as a singer-songwriter. Back in the late 1970s, Fernandes played with Kim Salmon and Dave Faulkner in Perth’s first punk rock band The Cheap Nasties. The band broke…

FROM the late 1970s to the mid 1980s, Fremantle was a vibrant and chaotic melting pot of art, music, theatre and political activism. For many it’s the city’s golden age, before it hosted the America’s Cup and became a softer, more gentrified affair. This tumultuous period is captured brilliantly by the exhibition Desperate Measures, which…

THE Hanky Code – a 1970’s fad where gay men would use different coloured hankies to indicate what they were into sexually – is the basis for a thought-provoking and funny stand-up show at Fringe World. In the show, Sydney comic Jarryd Prain explores what the different colours mean and how they relate to his…

IT’S become a refuge for the bored middle classes – the dreaded sip and paint. Hordes of unfulfilled folk quaffing chardonnay while painting their beloved chihuahua or pedigree cat. Thankfully, Perth artist Nicola Milan is giving the whole concept a delicious dark twist with a Tim Burton-inspired sip and sketch at Fringe World. Forget about…

ARTIST Louise Farnay has a fascinating lineage – her mum and grandmother were haute couture fashion designers for socialites in Adelaide and her Cornish ancestors were Rundell & Rundell, jewellers to the crown of England. Farnay has clearly inherited their attention-to-detail – her stunning hyper-realistic paintings take hundreds of hours to complete. But she has…

AWARD-WINNING Darwin comic Amy Hetherington is bringing her new show to Perth Fringe World. Drawing on her life as a new mum – juggling parenting and stand-up comedy – and her experiences living in the Northern Territory, Hetherington’s down-to-earth gags and cheeky observations have made her a favourite with audiences across Australia. Her new show…