i was meeting a friend for lunch on a street in sheung wan i hadn’t been in a while & found someone’s new hong kong graffiti campaign.
seems like there are two big themes going on in the area: chicken & guns. odd combo to say the least.
& on to the hong kong graffiti guns …
is it just me or do the bombs kind of look like birds at first glance? anyway, not sure why all the guns were necessary, but love the reverse stencil concept.
just a quick hong kong graffiti update. the people behind the llama wheat paste creations that now decorate tin hau & tai hang (among many other hk locales), just got in touch. the group calls themselves “the martians” & these “aliens” say that they come in peace & using “the universal language – art, to express messages to you.” far more interesting idea than the usual spaceship landing.
you can check out their fb page to see more of their commentaries around hk.
a collection of faces (in hong kong graffiti form) from around the city …
although nothing else might be free in hong kong, at least this person’s political opinion via hong kong graffiti is.
was in sheung wan for a hotel review and happened upon these bits of hong kong graffiti down a back alley. almost too bad they’re hidden from sight.
so not quite hong kong graffiti, but cars with ridiculous license plates (or are just ridiculous themselves) are just begging to have their photo snapped. here are four i caught in my ‘hood. the “u wish” deserves its own award for pretentiousness.
have you seen any other good plates roaming the streets of hong kong lately?
with school starting (school = hkust mba program) there hasn’t been a ton of time to post, but will try to my best to make up for lost pages now. with the races back (yes, there was time for the races of posting on here) i snapped a couple of picts in happy valley. first set here are from the underground pedestrian passage.
this set were snapped along my walk home just north of the track. the first one looks like a graphics airlines tag.
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.
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.)
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.)
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.