Penang, Part 2: Art on the streets

(Day 2) 26th June 2015

Part of the appeal of the island of Penang, and the capital city Georgetown, was their alternative, artistic vibe. This was most obviously expressed in the art installations and graffiti scrawled all over the city. In fact, there was so much of it, I thought I would put it all into a separate post, rather than interrupting another post with dozens of photos.

Yes, there will be dozens of photos, but very little writing, I promise (*crosses fingers*).

I initially just stumbled upon the painting and structures by accident, with no intention of seeking additional ones out. However, on my second full day in Georgetown, as Kaitlyn and I walked from Khoo Kongsi temple to the Terminal Weld bus station (more of that in the next post), we walked down a street with around five examples of street art, all within site of each other. 

Kaitlyn had a map showing the location of much of the city's street art, and proposed that we postponed the bus trip to Bukit Penang, and spent an hour or two trying to find as many of the examples on the map as we could. 

The street art map.

I had no objections to this, as I like street art, I like map reading, and I like treasure hunts (which this was as the map was frequently unclear on locations).


Let's go find some street art!!!

One of my favourites - you can sit on the saddle of the bike to pose for a photo.

      

Much of the street art on the map was in a similar style, and often employed real life props into the art, so that the art was half-drawn, half-real. 

Bruce Lee does not like cats!

Such an adorable one, and very well hidden down an alleyway.

In addition to these realistically painted children pieces, which seemed to be to be painted by one artist, there were many other more unusual pieces of graffiti scattered in amongst them.

Unsure if these are revolutionary or religious cats.

The colours here are not quite right.

The purple boy was one of my favourites, and covered a whole side of a building.

I really like that much of the art was interactive, which was an excuse for me for many gratutious selfies.


In my defence, Kaitlyn took more than me!

Erm, unsure what the lady behind me is doing.

I was supposed to be deafened by the minion. However...it looks...inappropriate.

Second attempt, not much better.

I want a dog that big. I could ride him and feed him dinosaur steaks.

That's one huge cat.

The cat only made sense, when you looked around the corner.

There was a slight cat theme.

Ultimately we managed to find over half of those listed on the map, and many, many more besides. Seemingly, the initial installations encouraged others to decorate the nearby streets, and there are now paintings and murals around every corner in this part of town.

More widely spread than the street art were the metal, graffiti-style, informative sketches of everyday life and history of Georgetown. I presumed that these were commissioned by the local government, and they were very helpful as well as amusing, and so I felt I should include all those that I found below.

Cheeky!

That all for the street art. 

Next up, probably Kuala Lumpur. Or maybe more Penang. I have not decided exactly how I will structure the blog that precedes this. Yes I am doing things out of order. This was an easy post to produce. So I did this one first. ;)

DSP

Useful Information:

• The street art is concentrated along Lebuh Armenian, and most can be easily found without needing the street art map, though for a few the map is needed (Bruce Lee was particularly difficult to find). The map is available at Penang Heritage Trust, and at the tourist information centre.