thai graffiti

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although no excuse for slacking on posting, i did abscond to chaing mai, thailand for four weeks in june/july to get my yoga teacher certification (woohoo!). ever on the lookout for graffiti, found a couple of good examples.

for these images, the first three are on wualai rd, near wat srisuphan (aka the silver temple — see a silver temple photo gallery). that street is also where you’ll find chiang mai’s saturday market. last thai graffiti pict is near a great veggie restaurant called taste of heaven where i took an awesome vegetarian cooking class (veggie pad thai and spring rolls anyone?).

for the last two, the second to last is the saturday market which had some great local crafts & street-side foot massages. the last pict is my yoga teacher cert from yoga institute/wise living yoga for proof i wasn’t just eating pad thai for a month. i’m pretty excited to start teaching in hk.

there was actually a ton more great thai graffiti in chiang mai, but all too often i passed it in a songtail &/or tuk tuk, so i couldn’t get a good shot. guess that just means i’ll have to go back.

 

hiking discoveries

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took advantage of the weekend weather to hit a couple of hiking trails. although there wasn’t any out-&-out hong kong graffiti, lots of people seemed to have used the rock & moss to express themselves. found these designs up mount butler.

hong kong graffiti - hong kong hiking -

okay, there’s no hong kong graffiti in this one, but i included it because i love this view of the icc & ifc bookending victoria harbour.

hong kong graffiti - hong kong hiking - 2

hong kong graffiti - hong kong hiking - 3

other than finding it a bit odd that people felt like carving into the rocks up there, the content in the middle of the three photos is odd to say the least  (or maybe my graffiti imagination isn’t creative enough).

all the way to the left is the phrase “jesus smiles” while on the right it’s “he sees you [some word that looks a lot like ‘naked’]”. still not sure of the two thoughts are related. of all the things to write on rocks overlooking the city though, that’s the hong kong graffiti that came to someone’s mind. really?

finding this stuff also reminded me of some fun shots i took a while back while hiking from quarry bay to stanley by the reservoir. love that hike.

hong kong graffiti - hong kong hiking - stanley - 1 hong kong graffiti - hong kong hiking - stanley - 2

 

edible art

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although i’ll admit that i went in with pretty low expectations of the “art” that was going to grace our table at mandarin grill + bar as part of the art hk 2012 menu. i ate my words — literally & figuratively — as the courses came rolling out.

you can read my full review on “art hk 2012: edible art“, but had to share the images from the graffiti-inspired course here. (also read the full piece to see images of the dessert course that absolutely blew me away.)

ART HK12 Menu - hong kong graffiti - wall full

ART HK12 Menu - hong kong Graffiti - cropped

the course in the photos is based on the concept of a graffiti-covered berlin wall. the “wall” is made of foie gras & brioche, & the combination’s topped with an edible sugar-based sheet that’s the canvas for the graffiti. the portion could easily feed two, but can’t really hold that against it.

even if you’re “not an art fan” (although it seems like just about everyone is professing love for some art form or another leading up to art hk 2012) this is a piece of creativity that you’ll still be able to get behind.

(although i did take my own photos, these are courtesy of the mandarin grill + bar since they’re so much better than mine for this hong kong graffiti post.)

the man behind “fei”

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spent the day in ngau tau kok (牛頭角) & kwun tong (觀塘區) with the guys from secret tours hk checking out some of the local artists who moved into the area’s abandoned factories. while we were walking around we found some great pieces by start from zero (which has a studio in the area), graphic airlines & 308 tattoo workshop.

the first two images were by the 308 (imagine what their tats looks like) on how ming street. the second one was hidden in the corner of a parking lot on tai yip street by hidden agenda. the last image on the top row is of fei from graphic airlines.

we stop into the graphic airlines studio & meet with tat who explained that he created fei (“fat”) to represent hong kong’s overconsumption. something to think about next time you see this image on a random wall around the city.

although the studio was a lot of fun to poke around with a ton of great pieces on just about every surface in there, my favorite thing there was the bike-cum-panda suit (image six).

the final picts are just two quick ones from the walk today — not exactly the glass & steel you see in central.

macau graffiti: round 2

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had to take some guests from out of town to macau & managed to find a who new set of graffiti there (click to see macau graffiti from my last trip). i left them to take picts of the church while i went & snapped these by beco de roma.

all children of the ’80s have to love the ode to gameboy, & i’m a big fan of the skeleton. take a closer look at the details on that one, it’s pretty cool. (& yes, at least that one is a start from zero work. who knew they did more than hong kong graffiti?)

urban inspiration

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i walk by this hong kong graffiti quote almost every day outside a construction site between king’s & electric road in tin hau. thankfully i finally remembered to stop & get a picture.

hong kong graffiti in tin hau

not sure if this completely qualifies as graffiti (well, neither did my last hong kong graffiti post), but love it anyway. the quotation marks around “beat” always remind me to visit one of my favorite — and truly nerdy — websites, the “blog” of “unnecessary” quotation marks.

historic vandalism

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went up to the jubilee (shing mun) reservoir on a hong kong history walk/tour/talk with jason wordie and found an example of some of the older hong kong graffiti you’ll find.

historic hong kong graffiti

this marking was left by the victorious japanese army under colonel doi teishichi when they defeated the british battalion stationed here in 1941. unfortunately no one is lining up to preserve the complex, interconnected network of tunnels that once helped to hold off the japanese forces.

if you do make it out to the tunnels (i highly suggest going with wordie and hearing all the background from him), you’ll see that the tunnels were named after london streets to help the middlesex regiment manning the site to better get their bearings.

the fall of the shing mun redoubt/jubilee reservoir and its surrounding areas — which cut hong kong’s water supplies — paved the way for the japanese to take over the rest of kowloon.

a couple of more photos from the tunnels:

king’s road revival

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although it’s fun to catch art around the city (or asia), also good to see tin hau getting some hong kong graffiti love. caught this one across king’s road. if you weren’t sure this wheatpaste was a start from zero piece by looking at it, they also signed it (see the close up).

         

no idea how these guys managed to put this up on such a busy road, but happy this is there though since the cheeky take on the hong kong construction logo that used to be in that spot (image below) faded a while ago.

 

chengdu graffiti

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was in chengdu last weekend visiting the panda reserve (see some picts below) & a friend. there wasn’t much interesting graffiti but did come across this piece down a small alley near the main mao statue.

                  

i love that last photo, so similar to what many friend look like on a lazy sunday afternoon.

we don’t need no education

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was walking in sheung wan & it turned, more or less, into a hunt for start from zero’s work. guessing the sfz guys are pink floyd fans — those first three wheatpaste picts were dotted along queen’s road. the fourth pict of the empty space was interesting since it looked like one of the construction logo knock-off (image 5, from tin hau) used to be there.

if you look behind the space in image four, you’ll see a ribbon. got a close up it — a sfz calling card.

had to include the final pict of a pawn shop that i shot near one of the odes to floyd. with the shadows across it, it seemed like something that you’d see in an old hong kong film.