Open House Perth 2014 - Part 3

To end my visit of the Open House Perth, I joined a tour I had booked for 2pm, to visit some of the murals painted during the Form Public Street Art in April this year.

The two guides leading this tour of around 25 people were very enthusiastic, one of them had been involved with this project from the very start, having been the one that had to liaise with local government agencies, owners of suitable walls to paint, and was also the one that contacted some of the artists, who in turn contacted other artists to join this first Public Urban Art festival in Perth.

Although the tour took about one hour and a half, Form organizes "Public Urban Art Walks" every Thursday and Saturday, at a cost of $45, and duration of 3 hours. These tours will be held until end of November, so if you are in Perth you still have some time to join them!
Otherwise you also get a free map from the King Street Arts Centre/FORM gallery and do the tour on your own, for free. The tour gave us some background information about the artists, their painting process, their inspirations, etc.

In April, when the festival was on I wrote 2 posts about it, which you can read  by following these two links: 1) and 2).

This mural in a Murray Street car park was done by LAST CHANCE, a group of artists who had previously worked together, but had gone separate ways in 2010, and came together again for the Form festival. They now have individual projects.

Last Chance

Also in the same car park, this next mural was painted by GAIA, from the USA, at 25 years, the youngest of the artists, but certainly a very talented young man. 

He graduated recently from the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore. He did a lot of research about Perth's buildings and famous politicians and included a lot of that in his vast mural, called "Dementia" that goes from black and white to colour.

Here you can see the detail of the buildings which include Government house, State Theatre.

Here you can see the whole mural (taken from his web page)

 This was one of the highlights of the show when painted in April. The artist is ROA, a Belgium artist famous for his large animal painted on walls around the world. He usually paints animals that used to inhabit the urban areas and have disappeared due to human expansion.
The mural is also the highest at 24 metres and took 8 days to paint on the side of this public housing building adjoining the Murray St car park. The artist delineated the snake and used cans of paint with nozzles of various dimensions to paint the scales. Hard work!!

 
This very colourful mural in the car park, was a collaboration by BEASTMAN, from Sydney and VANS THE OMEGA, from Adelaide.

 

From the Murray Street car park, we then walk to Wolf Lane, which is between Murray str and Hay street, a hip lane full of bars and restaurants, and in a dilapidated garage there is a big collection of murals, some of which I have pictured in my first post about the Street Art Festival in Aprial.
This one above is by PAUL DEEJ,  and reminds me of "Red Riding Hood", but it has something to do with the media, can you see the earphones?

This next one, a pasted mural by JETSTONORAMA, an African American Doctor who works with the Navajo people and has always been interested in street art.

Above is another mural from ROA, (see Snake above), this time a Ringtail Possum (marsupial).

This next one is a futuristic work of art by PIXEL PANCHO from Italy, and it was inspired by his trip to the Pilbara, an area north of Western Australia, where some of the artists were taken to paint, to meet Aboriginal folk and to get inspiration. 
Here the red dry earth on this "Driverless trains" was certainly modeled on the "Mars" red earth of that area. He is very fond of painting robots.

Can you see all the details in this picture? 

 This next one from ALEXIS DIAZ from Puerto Rico, an artist known for his intricate animal designs blended with human forms. Also in Wolf Lane, this mural of a Dragon took 2 weeks to paint and is among the best street art murals of 2014. Apparently he was painting right up to the time he had to leave for the airport...
The details are apparently painted with brushes, no wonder it took so long...

Details of Dragon's tail

By using an app on your mobile, this interactive mural changes colours. By artist and activist JORDAN SEILER, from the USA, founder of the Republiclab projects. This is next to the Secret Garden Cafe in Wolf Lane.

 We ended our tour of Wolf Lane with a STORMIE MILLS mural designed for "selfies". 
Can you see the hands? Here we have my daughter in law who accompanied me during this Open House day.

I really enjoyed the tour, even though I had seen most of these works in April, but I got to know a bit more about the artists and their personalities. Also the fact that it was a free tour was great.

And so ended my first and only day of this year's Open House Perth, hope you enjoyed the tour as well.

Have a great weekend!