Tag: graffiti

The Amazing Alexandra del Bene

azahar

alex mural project

I was so excited when Alex pinged me with a link to this video about her latest project. I had no idea that she was doing this and it’s absolutely amazing. She will be creating 15 gigantic murals themed around the 500th anniversary of the first round the world voyage, the Magellan-El Cano circumnavigation (1519 – 1522). See those buildings up there? Those will be her canvases. Located in Calle Tarfia, facing the river it is expected to set a Guinness world record.

Below you can see virtual depictions of how they will look when finished. Impressive, right?

I first met Alexandra by chance ten years ago when she was starting out here working as a “graffiti artist for hire” painting shop and bar shutters so that they wouldn’t get vandalised by taggers. One day I saw her painting a bar shutter while out for a walk on a Sunday afternoon and stopped to chat and we’ve been friends ever since. She once even joined one of my tapas tours in progress while “on the job” painting the shutters at Bodeguita Romero. While Alexandra still does the occasional shutter art, she is now also an award-winning artist recognised both here and abroad. An amazing accomplishment for someone who arrived here from Rome in 2010 with a young daughter to start a new life. I am quite in awe of not only her talent but also her energy and spirit. You can check out her website here…

Alexandra del Bene

alex murals

alex virtual murals

Málaga Street Art

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malaga street art (1)
Just before Christmas I took a trip to Málaga and stayed at the Room Mate Lola, smack dab in the centre of the new Soho district, which turned out to be an excellent location for getting around. The “Barrio de las Artes”, once a dodgy area of town, has been transformed into a bohemian rhapsody of street art with international artists being invited to add their creations to the walls of the neighbourhood buildings. Somehow I missed getting a photo of the two biggies – massive murals just behind the Contemporary Arts Museum put up by D´Face and Obey – but you can see them here at East of Málaga.

My favourite is the chameleon by ROA, and below you can see some others that I liked. Click on any image to enlarge and begin slideshow…

As much as I like the new Soho, it feels a bit like doing things backwards. “Traditionally” in most urban areas you’d get artists taking over low rent places filled with the usual array of drug addicts, prostitutes and other ne’er do wells, and as they upped the “trendy” the middle class would start moving in and jacking up property prices, eventually pushing the artists out to start the cycle over again elsewhere. But this Soho is a government promoted project, with “street art” being commissioned by city hall, creating an artificial boho feel to the area, which is pleasant to look at but yet feels somewhat contrived. It’ll be interesting to see how it develops.

Recyle Bin Graffiti Competition

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Yesterday afternoon I came across a group of graffiti artists participating in a competition, painting glass recycle bins (concurso contenedor vidrio). This has been going on for the last few years. Or at least, I’ve noticed the painted bins around town before but have never seen the annual contest in progress until now.

I was pleased to see a lot more stylishness to the painting this year, rather than the usual graffiti mishmash of wonky letters and weird images. Most artists had a picture of what they were painting on top of their bin, some showing how they worked out the dimensions, and it was quite impressive to see how they turned a flat painting into a three-dimensional one.

A couple of my favourites were the flamenco dancer and the “Eye of Cthulhu” one below, which of course reminded me of my friend raincoaster, so I made a special collage of it just for her.

[click on images to enlarge]

If anyone knows who won the competition let me know!
List of participants

Graffiti Buster

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What do you think of graffiti?

In general it just looks like vandalism to me. Okay, every once in a blue moon you get a Haring, Basquiat or Banksy, but you know… hardly ever. Mostly it’s crappy blobby spray-painted messes that only serve to make neighbourhoods look shabby.

I guess when a building is abandoned, like the one in the before & after pics on the left, and its windows have already been covered over with layers of tacky posters, it’s not any worse to have a couple of guys from a local gallery come and paint that over with their website logo. But many shop and restaurant owners would have to repaint their properties on a weekly basis just to have clean walls for a day or two.

So I was surprised to come across Alexandra Del Bene the other day while on my way home from a walk around the Alameda. She was busy with both spray cans and paint brushes painting the window protectors of the Santa Marta Bar (home of Sevilla’s largest flamenquín!), but it looked to me as if she were doing a job and not just a hit and run burst of “artistic expression”, so I stopped and asked if she’d been commissioned to paint the Santa Marta. Turns out that a lot of people have been commissioning her to paint their storefronts so that they won’t get vandalised by roving so-called “graffiti artists”, who curiously don’t vandalise Alexandra’s stuff. I guess it’s a sort of professional courtesy?

alex-001

[click to enlarge]

Alexandra showed me her business cards, which are decorated with pics of her various projects, and it turned out that one – a candy store – was just around the corner, so I also got a snap of that one. Anyhow, we had a nice long chat and it struck me how much more interesting life is when you stop and talk to people instead of just walking by.