When you are out and about in a city, you may come across some thought-provoking artwork without stepping inside a museum or a gallery. Subways, exterior walls, bridge railings, or almost any public space can function as a platform for street art, which continues to divide opinions.
Whether it’s commissioned or unsanctioned, cute colourful yarn bombs (graffiti knitting) or sharp stencil graffiti, some see street art as nuisance and vandalism, others as an expression of artistic freedom and a way to brighten up the bleak urban environment. It can be used to provoke, advertise, commemorate, decorate, make a socio-political statement, personalise sterile public places, or simply reach a wider audience in an unconventional format, to get your work ‘out there’. Whatever the reasons behind it and however we feel about it, urban art in its many forms is here to stay.
I’m no expert on (urban) art or its meaning but if it’s well-executed, powerful, quirky, colourful, or funny, I’m likely to stop, admire, and photograph it. As pictures are said to speak louder than words, I’ll let this random selection of images from my travels do the talking. Have a great (arty) weekend!
Brighton
Bristol
London
Brussels
Oxford
Kraków
Glasgow
Really cool pictures!
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Thank you. There’s so much cool, funky street art everywhere. 🙂
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You’ve got quite a collection of street art! The ones in Bristol are fantastic!
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Thank you so much! I actually have loads more from Bristol, partly because I’ve visited it so often, partly because street art is so prominent there. I have a feeling I haven’t seen even half of it yet but that’s another good reason to revisit the city.
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Amazing pictures! This is real art, you cannot compare this to vandals scribbling dirty words or declarations of love to random walls. Street art makes urban spaces beautiful and provokes critical thinking.
On another note, where is your profile picture taken? It looks decidedly familiar! 🙂
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Thank you! I didn’t even realise how many street art photos I had taken until I started to look for examples for this post – and I’ll be taking loads more in the future.
My profile photo was taken on a day trip to Monaco. I just had to go on an F1 pilgrimage. 🙂
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There are many real artists among street artists. I have my own street art picture gallery but only from Milan. Nice idea to focus on this perspective when traveling.
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It’s also fun to look for the detail when you are out and about: it’s so easy to focus only on the grand landscapes or cityscapes. Although I now look for the quirky, the unusual, ‘the little things’, I haven’t always done so: my older travel photos are definitely lacking in that respect.
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