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In a time when most female artists were painting still life and family portraits, a group of Perth women broke the chains of domesticity and looked outside the home for their inspiration.

Towards Perth is an exhibition of their work at the Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery in the Dr Harold Schenberg Art Centre.

The oils, watercolours and wood engravings created by seven women in the first half of last century are all part of the Cruthers Collection of Women's Art, housed at UWA.

Landscapes and seascapes dominate.  Audrey Greenhalgh (1903 - 1991) has painted three oils of beach scenes, capturing the texture of the waves and sand, and the quality of light and shadows, punctuated with glistening seagulls.

Elise Blumann (1897 - 1990) has also painted oils of beach and bush, including Rottnest Island and Salt Lake.

Portia Bennett's (1898 - 1989) watercolours of the city in the 1940s and early 1950s reveal wide tree-lined streets with gracious low rise red brick buildings.

Lawson Flats Riverside Drive has been painted from just about where the new Elizabeth Quay will be developed - and the changes to that landscape will make it almost unrecognisable.

Hotel Adelphi, Perth shows a quiet St George's Terrace with Foys department store, a big sign advertising Dodge cars and, of course, the original Adelphi, which became the Parmelia Hilton.

An unusual element of this exhibition is a series of small wood engravings by Edith Trethowan (1901 - 1939). There are beautifully detailed pictures of the Round House and beaches in Fremantle and a view of Mounts Bay Road, looking towards Perth, with what might be Government House vegetable gardens in the foreground.

A favourite is View from Back Door (1928-29) , looking beyond the washing fluttering on a clothes line next to a picket fence, to rows of corrugated irons rooves with brick chimneys and a flock of birds swooping past a church and steeple.

Everybody who sees it imagines it is their old neighbourhood.

In another gallery is ORIENTing , a collection of Ian Fairweather's paintings, some of them created on pieces of cardboard, painted while living in a hut he had built on Bribie Island, Queensland.

Fairweather was an eccentric nomadic artist who is remembered for building a raft and trying to sail from Queensland to Indonesia.

He also lived in China for a while and his work from that time has obvious Asian influences.

Perth gallery owner Rose Skinner recognised Fairweather's talent and promoted him, so a lot of his work is in private collections in WA.

ORIENTing follows his career from the 1930s to the 1960s.  Next door is ORIENTing: With or Without You .  It is a response to Fairweather's work, by several contemporary artists.

Works include three-dimensional cardboard fibre and fabric pieces, blackboard drawings, digital silk screens and traditional Tiwi Island woven and painted wall sculptures.

Both exhibitions run until 13 July.