Mural Art

The Agents of Change Augustine Kofie, Steve More, Remi Rough, LXone and David Shillinglaw recently have been busy in London, painting the largest mural in London, as was mentioned by Ian Cox who by the way took some great photos of this painting action! Keeping the geometry of the design intact is no easy feat especially when you can’t stand back and have a look what you are doing without negotiating six ladders and some traffic. ...

The guys, who invented the biggest marker worldwide and created their own graffiti mobile known under the popping name Everfresh, just teamed up with a couple of friends to repaint Melbourne’s infamous ACDC Lane for charity… Zoos Victoria is fighting extinction and has committed to ensure twenty native species do not go extinct on their watch. Enlisting the help of laneway artists from Everfresh and Blender studios, the fight has taken to the streets. The murals will help to raise awareness of some of these critically endangered species, many of which live right in Melbourne’s own backyard. For more info zoo.org.au! ...

Martin Hawkes and his video team filmed famous German urban art duo Herakut while painting a pretty nice mural in Stavanger on the west coast of Norway! The mural, which shows a girl and a couple of monkey in that popular mixture style of photo-realistic graffiti and damn rough painting, was part of the Nuart Festival and was built in 2011… Nuart is an annual international contemporary street and urban art festival established in 2001. From the first week of September an invited international team of street artists start to leave their mark on the city’s walls, both indoor and out, creating one of Europe’s most dynamic and constantly evolving public art events. (about Nuart) ...

For month now, the boys and girls of Cave Berlin are hardworking to make it possible to open the new, but still secret gallery space near Rosenthaler Platz in Berlin for the public. Now I heard that it’s probably April 27th, when Cave is going to open their three art spaces to the public, showing five artists and their works… But until then, there’s still lots of work to be done, as James Bullough and Addison Karl (JBAK) just showed when they painted this new collaboration mural in the Cave’s backyard, combining their contrasting styles into a mashup of antonyms: realism vs. illustrative, expressive vs. precise, hard vs. soft, black vs. a spectrum… ...

Last Friday, Berlin-based Quintessenz Creation crew (don’t forget their upcoming exhibition together with Danny Doom in Hamburg!) was invited by a somehow popular sporting goods manufacturer to paint a mural at Sage Club in Mitte, which is why Berlin now has another colorful facade… Using nothing more than liters and liters of paint together with several alienated fire extinguishers, the Quintessenz boys bombarded the prepared wall (they previously painted a shoe silhouette using latex-paint) and created in that way meters long drips in different colors which now are visible from long distance. I for one took cover from the paint-rain and tried to take some photos from the roof, documenting the action. ...

Art censorship is not new, nevertheless it’s a problem everyone should care about. Paintings, images, murals, posters, stickers, and photos are transporting subtexts and opinions which is why certain governments, lobbies and other powerful people try to control those message by the use of extensive censorship… The latest popular example of art censorship is the story of British graffiti artist Shok-1 and his Heart Noose mural in China: Invited by the Chinese government to paint a huge mural back in 2011, Shok-1 painted a somehow controversial piece showing nothing more than a heart-shaped noose. I for one don’t know the deeper meaning of this symbol, nevertheless Chinese politicians decided to censor the mural by reinterpreting the entire image. Now, several weeks later, Shok-1 had the chance to revive his mural in London - far away from the Chinese governments reach… ...

boa mistura - typography murals Spanish urban art collective Boa Mistura (who did this crazy TV Kills Your Brain installation) just created some amazing perspective typography murals in Vila Brâsilandia, one of the favelas in Sao Paulo! The five-headed crew repainted several vecos and vielas - those winding streets, being the true articulators of the internal life of the community - in bright colors, presenting words like beauty, pride, sweetness, firmness and love as anamorphic paintings, making the poor suburb a little more colorful… ...

As I already told you, Europe’s finest Da Mental Vaporz (DMV) crew left France and is currently in Melbourne, Australia, exhibiting at Rtist Gallery and painting large murals as this brilliant clip by Matthew Harding shows… Nothing more to say, except: Well done boys! For more info about DMV, check out their former show in Toulouse and their great exquisite corpse mural in Brest, yo!

Alexandre Farto aka Vhils is probably one of the most influencing urban artists for the last two or three years. With his unique explosion wall art technique (I would call it 3D stenciling) he is travelling the world… The Vhils Interview: Impressed after looking at this amazing artworks? If you wanna know some more details about Vhils and his story, read the interview we did with him before he became that famous! And now watch this amazing exhibition trailer… ...

Conor Harrington is an urban fine art king, we all know that! Combining spray and oil paint for several years now, he is one of the big guys when it comes to merge the urban, street influenced dynamics and the classical painting techniques… In the summer 2011, the Irishman home to Ireland for a big project including three murals, with both the journey and the paintings being inspired by Austin Clarke’s poem The Lost Heifer. Luckily for us, the entire trip has been documented and was finally published (six hours ago) entitled Black Herds of The Rain! ...