Latest news with #streetart
BBC News
a day ago
- Entertainment
- BBC News
A Sign Of Humour: The mystery behind Glasgow's fake street signs
A self-proclaimed guerrilla artist is covering Glasgow in parody street signs in a bid to get people to look up from their phones and pay attention to the city around anonymous artist, known as 'A Sign of Humour', has placed his spoof signs close to Glaswegian landmarks such as the Finnieston crane and the Barrowland says the main goal is to spark joy but the project began in response to what he saw as a lack of appreciation for Glasgow and its artist says that his children are the only people who know his signmaking secret. "The kids know because I will run designs past them to get their opinions and things but they're very much under secrecy not to tell people about it," he says."If it's done anonymously then it's about the sign, it kind of adds to the fun." Glasgow's history of street art and murals goes back decades. The city recently hosted the first exhibition of graffiti artist Banksy.'A Sign of Humour' admires Banksy but insists his own work is different."I don't shy away from politics", he says."It's just not quite what I want to be doing with this project.""The focus is on fun," he says."If I can make somebody having a bad day see something, laugh, and improve their day then that's good." Using cable ties for quick installation and easy removal, the signs are made by painting plywood before printing and applying custom vinyl stickers. The materials are chosen to be recyclable and reusable, he says. 'Nothing is permanent, it's all designed to be temporary, to be easily removed, or dealt with.'The artist prefers to put up signs in the middle of the day, blending in rather than standing out. 'Too many people are walking around not just looking at their phones, they're looking lost and not taking the world in around them,' he says."It's amazing how often you can have a sign - that's quite a bizarre sign if you actually notice - and people just don't notice it, they don't take it in.""It's the major motivation behind the project". "There's so much going on in the world that it's very easy to just get stuck in that rut and get stuck in your own little bubble because it feels safer," he says."We're just bombarded with bad news constantly so having something that's different makes people realise that the world around them isn't all bad, it can be quite funny and amusing as well."I think it just contributes to the wellbeing of society," he signs are mostly in Glasgow while others are in Largs and Bonnybridge - a small village often called the UK's UFO of his favourites is beside a police box and includes Doctor Who, another warns against pterodactyl nesting at the dome-shaped cinema beside Glasgow Science Centre and the OVO Hydro arena is portrayed as a artist hopes to travel to Edinburgh during the city's festivals in August. The artist hasn't received any trouble while installing signs, but says he would take them down if doesn't consider the work to be graffiti despite the guerrilla installation in public areas."If it's adding something to the street rather than detracting from it, then to me that's where you're crossing into line of art rather than graffiti," he artist put signs where they won't distract motorists, instead they are only visible in spots along rivers, quiet streets and parks for pedestrians and cyclists to stop and enjoy."I'm hoping that they're carefully enough put up that they're not going to get mistaken for real signs," he says. "I would also hope that if people looked at the signs and actually took notice of them, they would very quickly realise that they're not real.' Some of the designs have been shared widely online."People post photographs of them on their own feeds and I noticed that one of them on Instagram seems to have gone absolutely viral, so it's got people from all over the world commenting on it," he once a sign is up, the artist no longer sees it as his own."Once it's out there you kind of have to let it go because it's no longer yours, it's there for everybody," he says.
The National
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- The National
No Trespassing: Dubai exhibition challenges contradiction between gallery and street art
When curator Priyanka Mehra invited Fathima Mohiuddin to create works for a summer exhibition at the Ishara Art Foundation, she sensed a certain hesitation – a diffidence that suggested the street artist was out of her element. Mohiuddin, who goes by the moniker Fatspatrol, is known for her sprawling bold murals. She has covered the facades of buildings in the UAE and Canada with her work. A famous local example is For the Love of Birds, where she decked seven buildings on Yas Island, Abu Dhabi with images of birds found in the UAE. But the Mohiuddin in the gallery space was not the same artist that Mehra had become familiar with over the years. 'She produced some designs on what she was planning to do in the space,' Mehra says. 'But in my head I thought 'this isn't the Fatspatrol I know'. She's a strong player with scale, but that wasn't coming out.' Mohiuddin's timidity was understandable. After all, a street artist in a gallery setting is a bit of an oxymoron. Street art, by definition, is inextricable from the urban environment. It responds to the architecture, the social fabric, the noise, grime and politics of public space. By contrast, galleries are curated and controlled, even relatively sterile. If anything, galleries can be antithetical to the core ethos that drives street artists. When street art enters a gallery setting, the immediacy that gives it its edge is blunted. It becomes sapped of its subversive spirit. But the new exhibition at Ishara Art Foundation challenges (or even embraces) this inherent contradiction between the gallery and street art. No Trespassing is the first summer exhibition to be held at the foundation. Running until August 30, it brings six artists into the gallery – not to simply pin their works in the white space, but to treat it with the same way they would an open urban environment. 'I told Fatspatrol to think of the space as a playground, not a white cube space,' Mehra says. A week later, just before work on the exhibition was due to start, Mohiuddin returned from a trip to India with a 'radical idea' of painting the space using a broom similar to those used by street sweepers. The result was a moving, even awe-inspiring gestural trail, with bold, fervent strokes from which emerge forms, like birds, faces and stop signs. It is a thought-provoking work, particularly with the use of a broom – a tool used to sweep and clean – to imprint marks in the gallery. The work, dubbed The World Out There, also incorporated several scavenged objects, from discarded street signs and license plates to posters and scraps of wood. 'She could have gone very abstract with it, because it's easier to just make marks with the brooms. But then she has this beautiful, expressive quality,' Mehra says. Mohiuddin's work can be seen as the curatorial nucleus of No Trespassing. It is at the very centre of the exhibition, and is one of the few that is not in direct dialogue with adjacent works. But each work in the exhibition responds similarly to the gallery space. Some leave marks and even stage protests, whereas others speak out by removing elements. Take the works in the opening space as examples. Kiran Maharjan, a street artist from Nepal who goes by H11235, presents two pieces that face one another. On the right is a collage that has many of the hallmarks of his oeuvre – blending photorealism with the digital while drawing parallels between architectural elements in the UAE and Nepal. The work is the concept Maharjan had initially planned to paint in the space. However, as the artist wasn't able to travel to the UAE due to visa issues, Maharjan as well as the Ishara team improvised, taking the initial design and abstracting it further. 'We had to change the approach, because none of us can do this and paint like he does,' Mehra says. Instead of rendering the hands and buildings with the photorealistic touch Maharjan is known for, the team replaced the design with materials, like corrugated steel and wood, blending them with acrylic panels. Thus, the project became at once a juxtaposition between what-is and what-could-have-been, while simultaneously testing the definition of authorship. While Maharjan's work is a vivid display of how an artist can leave a mark – even through their absence – Rami Farook does so by pulling elements out. The Emirati artist has removed a significant portion of one of the gallery's walls, baring its metal framing and insulating wool. The gypsum board that was removed leans against the perpendicular wall – the dust from the removal process still left on the floor. The work is a thought-provoking example of intervening through erasure. 'It is a very conceptual piece,' Mehra says. 'It is talking about extraction, and this is the only work that is an extraction, as compared to putting something on the surface, which also brings us down to ownership.' The rest of the works in No Trespassing spotlight other public and personal interactions with urban landscapes. In For a Better Modern Something, Emirati artist Sarah Alahbabi presents cement blocks printed with maps and superimposed by LED strips that run the surface of the wall and floor. The work draws from Abu Dhabi's urban fabric and came as a result of Alahbabi's experiences as a pedestrian in the city. The final space of the exhibition features two complimentary works. In Heritage Legacy Authentic, Palestinian-Filipino artist Khaled Esguerra reflects on the urban transformation of historic neighbourhoods. Sheets of ordinary copier paper are plastered on the floor, forming a surface that actively invites interaction. Viewers are encouraged to stomp, tear, or even skid over the sheets. As the top layers strip away, words like Quality, Indulge and Fresh emerge, bringing to mind the sanitised rhetoric of billboards and commercial advertisements. These fragments of marketing-speak crowd the floor over the course of the exhibition, alluding to the takeover of gentrification. The surrounding walls, meanwhile, are the work of Palestinian artist Salma Dib. Her layered, fragmented, and faded messages evoke the raw immediacy of graffiti – recalling how walls, in contested spaces, often become platforms of resistance for the voiceless. The work is inspired by the walls of Palestine, Jordan and Syria. The work, Mehra says, is rooted in Dib's own experiences while visiting refugee camps, 'waking up to something and by the night it isn't there any more'. The work, Mehra says, took the longest time to produce in the exhibition. 'Because she first spray painted the words, then sands it, and then she puts posters up and spray paints a bit more,' Mehra says. 'It took three weeks to make.' Collectively, the works in No Trespassing prompt a reconsideration of the everyday aesthetic of the streets. By bringing elements like copier paper, construction materials or faded wall markings into the gallery, the exhibition shows how torn flyers and weathered signs are not just happenstance noise in urban life, rather carriers of memory and resistance.
The Australian
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Australian
Sarajevo street art marks out brighter future
Bullet holes still pockmark many Sarajevo buildings; others threaten collapse under disrepair, but street artists in the Bosnian capital are using their work to reshape a city steeped in history. A half-pipe of technicolour snakes its way through the verdant Mount Trebevic, once an Olympic bobsled route -- now layered in ever-changing art. "It's a really good place for artists to come here to paint, because you can paint here freely," Kerim Musanovic told AFP, spraycan in hand as he repaired his work on the former site of the 1984 Sarajevo Games. Retouching his mural of a dragon, his painting's gallery is this street art hotspot between the pines. Like most of his work, he paints the fantastic, as far removed from the divisive political slogans that stain walls elsewhere in the Balkan nation. "I want to be like a positive view. When you see my murals or my artworks, I don't want people to think too much about it. "It's for everyone." During the Bosnian war, 1992-1995, Sarajevo endured the longest siege in modern conflict, as Bosnian Serb forces encircled and bombarded the city for 44 months. Attacks on the city left over 11,500 people dead, injured 50,000 and forced tens of thousands to flee. But in the wake of a difficult peace, that divided the country into two autonomous entities, Bosnia's economy continues to struggle leaving the physical scars of war still evident around the city almost three decades on. 'A form of therapy' "After the war, segregation, politics, and nationalism were very strong, but graffiti and hip-hop broke down all those walls and built new bridges between generations," local muralist Adnan Hamidovic, also known as rapper Frenkie, said. Frenkie vividly remembers being caught by police early in his career, while tagging trains bound for Croatia in the northwest Bosnian town of Tuzla. The 43-year-old said the situation was still tense then, with police suspecting he was doing "something political". For the young artist, only one thing mattered: "Making the city your own". Graffiti was a part of Sarajevo life even during the war, from signs warning of sniper fire to a bulletproof barrier emblazoned with the words "Pink Floyd" -- a nod to the band's 1979 album The Wall. Sarajevo Roses -- fatal mortar impact craters filled with red resin -- remain on pavements and roads around the city as a memorial to those killed in the strikes. When he was young, Frenkie said the thrill of illegally painting gripped him, but it soon became "a form of therapy" combined with a desire to do something significant in a country still recovering from war. "Sarajevo, after the war, you can imagine, it was a very, very dark place," he said at Manifesto gallery where he exhibited earlier this year. "Graffiti brought life into the city and also colour." 'A way of resisting' Sarajevo's annual Fasada festival, first launched in 2021, has helped promote the city's muralists while also repairing buildings, according to artist and founder Benjamin Cengic. "We look for overlooked neighbourhoods, rundown facades," Cengic said. His team fixes the buildings that will also act as the festival's canvas, sometimes installing insulation and preserving badly damaged homes in the area. The aim is to "really work on creating bonds between local people, between artists". Mostar, a city in southern Bosnia, will also host the 14th edition of its annual street art festival in August. With unemployment nearing 30 percent in Bosnia, street art also offers an important springboard to young artists, University of Sarajevo sociology professor Sarina Bakic said. "The social context for young people is very difficult," Bakic said. Ljiljana Radosevic, a researcher at Finland's Jyvaskyla University, said graffiti allowed youth to shake off any "nationalist narrative or imposed identity". "It's a way of resisting," Radosevic said. al-cbo/al/cw
National Post
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- National Post
Sarajevo street art marks out brighter future
SARAJEVO — Bullet holes still pockmark many Sarajevo buildings; others threaten collapse under disrepair, but street artists in the Bosnian capital are using their work to reshape a city steeped in history. Article content A half-pipe of technicolour snakes its way through the verdant Mount Trebevic, once an Olympic bobsled route — now layered in ever-changing art. Article content 'It's a really good place for artists to come here to paint, because you can paint here freely,' Kerim Musanovic told AFP, spraycan in hand as he repaired his work on the former site of the 1984 Sarajevo Games. Article content Article content 'I want to be like a positive view. When you see my murals or my artworks, I don't want people to think too much about it. Article content 'It's for everyone.' Article content During the Bosnian war, 1992-1995, Sarajevo endured the longest siege in modern conflict, as Bosnian Serb forces encircled and bombarded the city for 44 months. Article content Attacks on the city left over 11,500 people dead, injured 50,000 and forced tens of thousands to flee. Article content But in the wake of a difficult peace, that divided the country into two autonomous entities, Bosnia's economy continues to struggle leaving the physical scars of war still evident around the city almost three decades on. Article content 'A form of therapy' Article content 'After the war, segregation, politics, and nationalism were very strong, but graffiti and hip-hop broke down all those walls and built new bridges between generations,' local muralist Adnan Hamidovic, also known as rapper Frenkie, said. Article content Frenkie vividly remembers being caught by police early in his career, while tagging trains bound for Croatia in the northwest Bosnian town of Tuzla. The 43-year-old said the situation was still tense then, with police suspecting he was doing 'something political'. Article content For the young artist, only one thing mattered: 'Making the city your own'. Article content Graffiti was a part of Sarajevo life even during the war, from signs warning of sniper fire to a bulletproof barrier emblazoned with the words 'Pink Floyd' — a nod to the band's 1979 album The Wall. Article content Sarajevo Roses — fatal mortar impact craters filled with red resin — remain on pavements and roads around the city as a memorial to those killed in the strikes. Article content Article content When he was young, Frenkie said the thrill of illegally painting gripped him, but it soon became 'a form of therapy' combined with a desire to do something significant in a country still recovering from war. Article content 'Sarajevo, after the war, you can imagine, it was a very, very dark place,' he said at Manifesto gallery where he exhibited earlier this year.
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Sarajevo street art marks out brighter future
Bullet holes still pockmark many Sarajevo buildings; others threaten collapse under disrepair, but street artists in the Bosnian capital are using their work to reshape a city steeped in history. A half-pipe of technicolour snakes its way through the verdant Mount Trebevic, once an Olympic bobsled route -- now layered in ever-changing art. "It's a really good place for artists to come here to paint, because you can paint here freely," Kerim Musanovic told AFP, spraycan in hand as he repaired his work on the former site of the 1984 Sarajevo Games. Retouching his mural of a dragon, his painting's gallery is this street art hotspot between the pines. Like most of his work, he paints the fantastic, as far removed from the divisive political slogans that stain walls elsewhere in the Balkan nation. "I want to be like a positive view. When you see my murals or my artworks, I don't want people to think too much about it. "It's for everyone." During the Bosnian war, 1992-1995, Sarajevo endured the longest siege in modern conflict, as Bosnian Serb forces encircled and bombarded the city for 44 months. Attacks on the city left over 11,500 people dead, injured 50,000 and forced tens of thousands to flee. But in the wake of a difficult peace, that divided the country into two autonomous entities, Bosnia's economy continues to struggle leaving the physical scars of war still evident around the city almost three decades on. 'A form of therapy' "After the war, segregation, politics, and nationalism were very strong, but graffiti and hip-hop broke down all those walls and built new bridges between generations," local muralist Adnan Hamidovic, also known as rapper Frenkie, said. Frenkie vividly remembers being caught by police early in his career, while tagging trains bound for Croatia in the northwest Bosnian town of Tuzla. The 43-year-old said the situation was still tense then, with police suspecting he was doing "something political". For the young artist, only one thing mattered: "Making the city your own". Graffiti was a part of Sarajevo life even during the war, from signs warning of sniper fire to a bulletproof barrier emblazoned with the words "Pink Floyd" -- a nod to the band's 1979 album The Wall. Sarajevo Roses -- fatal mortar impact craters filled with red resin -- remain on pavements and roads around the city as a memorial to those killed in the strikes. When he was young, Frenkie said the thrill of illegally painting gripped him, but it soon became "a form of therapy" combined with a desire to do something significant in a country still recovering from war. "Sarajevo, after the war, you can imagine, it was a very, very dark place," he said at Manifesto gallery where he exhibited earlier this year. "Graffiti brought life into the city and also colour." 'A way of resisting' Sarajevo's annual Fasada festival, first launched in 2021, has helped promote the city's muralists while also repairing buildings, according to artist and founder Benjamin Cengic. "We look for overlooked neighbourhoods, rundown facades," Cengic said. His team fixes the buildings that will also act as the festival's canvas, sometimes installing insulation and preserving badly damaged homes in the area. The aim is to "really work on creating bonds between local people, between artists". Mostar, a city in southern Bosnia, will also host the 14th edition of its annual street art festival in August. With unemployment nearing 30 percent in Bosnia, street art also offers an important springboard to young artists, University of Sarajevo sociology professor Sarina Bakic said. "The social context for young people is very difficult," Bakic said. Ljiljana Radosevic, a researcher at Finland's Jyvaskyla University, said graffiti allowed youth to shake off any "nationalist narrative or imposed identity". "It's a way of resisting," Radosevic said. al-cbo/al/cw
