Source : PERTHNOW NEWS
It’s coming up six months since a trio of Perth blokes took a gamble on opening an edgy, artist-lead, Shenton Park art gallery, and looking back, they have already had a thrilling ride.
2026 Young Community Citizen of the Year Zac Cawdron, musician Nelson Mondlane and finance director Ryan Christopher Fernandez have transformed the Railway Road building, which has stood vacant for years, into the SAVA Gallery.
The gallery brings together fine art, graffiti, street and tattoo art and murals in a big and bold celebration of Perth’s creative scene.
Since opening in March, they have hosted an exhibition a month and sold-out three opening nights. The venue now includes two gallery spaces, artists studios, mural walls and an event space.
They also take commissions for murals and have a clothing line, developed in collaboration with artists they have worked with over the past few years.
“The journey’s been quite wild,” Cawdron said.
“It’s crazy how fast its been. We are now up to six shows in this space. It’s fast turnovers and every show offers something different… but everyone involved it getting a lot of fulfilment from this venture.”
Their latest exhibition Common Thief, by Perth muralist and painter Jordan Rush, is open until September 4. Rush’s challenging piece are already largely sold out.
Two weeks’ later, the big guns move in when SAVA hosts Perth’s oldest graffiti crew – Taking Full Control aka TFC.
Eighteen Perth artists will contribute works to the show, which will showcase graffiti from the 80s and 90s up to today.
“They are celebrating 39 years of existence — about 18 artists from varying generations are all chipping into this show that the’ve been wanting to put on for over a decade,” Cawdron said.
“It’s about the history of their crew, dating back to the 90s and beyond that. It will be a full experience as they will be using the full gallery.
Cawdron said Sava began as a bit of “fun on the side for me and Nelson”. They spent the first two years curating pop-up art exhibitions across Perth and then published a book in 2024, SAVA: Art on Canvas and Walls, which features works from a collection of artists.
He reckons they have worked with more than 200 artists over that time – largely emerging and already successful young artists, who can find themselves pigeon-holed by mainstream galleries.
“We did a little book launch at the Rosemount Hotel that only a few people came to,” Cawdron said.
“Now, we’ve got a monthly show happening, with probably 30 artists since we moved in, and they’ve been quite diverse. What we have achieved is overwhelming, but in a good way.”
SAVA is houses in a more than 100-year-old building, marked out for revitalisation as part of the City of Subiaco’s partnership with urban-renewal organisation Sparemarkt aimed at opening new creative hubs.
The Sava team also curate a youth art exhibition at RAC arena, which rotates every six months. The Passing By project puts a collection of 16 artworks at a time in a high-traffic area at the area and is designed to ask commuters to stop and to help people by giving them their time.
“You can help people by just being present and hearing their stories,” he said.
And they are now working on a documentary of the gallery’s journey, which they started when they opened. The doco’s full storyline should be completed in time for their first anniversary.
“I think that will be a period of good reflection,” he said.
