Street Art is a rising trend in the travel industry. Artists around the world are creating unique cultural pieces, via public art initiatives. From Montreal to Tauranga to Johannesburg, art fairs will be plentiful this summer. The public art initiatives serve as the city’s outdoor museums, allowing visitors to experience the cultural heritage of these countries, often functioning as a catalyst into the underlying cultural, social or political landscape.

Montreal, Quebec

MURAL International Public Art Festival, June 8-18, 2017

The 5^th edition of the MURAL International Public Art Festival will be held from June 8 – 18, 2017 in Montreal, transforming the Saint-Laurent Boulevard into an open-air museum where local and international artists will unite their talents in the most creative manners.

MURAL Fest, the largest street art event in North America, attracting more than one million visitors each year, will present 20 new murals produced this year, from the Quartier des Spectacles, the Mile End to Old Montreal, bringing MURAL’s permanent public legacy to more than 80 major works.

In 2017 MURAL Fest offers participants to attend the creation of live murals, musical concerts, conferences, exhibitions and a variety of artistic programming.

2017 Highlights include:

• Murals by leading international artists including: Ron English (USA), INSA (UK), 1010 (Germany), Mad C (Germany), Ricardo Cavolo (Spain), Fintan Magee (Australia), Ruben Sanchez (Spain), Nuria Mora (Spain), Smithe (Mexico) and Onur (Switzerland);

• Many prominent Canadian artists including: Fluke and Dodo from A’Shop, Ola Volo, SbuOne, Scribe csx, Kevin Ledo, Monosourcil, Mort, Aydin Matlabi and Miss Me;

• Aaron Li-Hill, a Canadian artist living in New York, will produce a large-scale art installation to adorn Saint-Laurent Boulevard all summer long;

• Third annual Mural Art Fair (Foire d’art mural or FAM) at the Marché Bonsecours, produce art installations, temporary murals, and special events;
• Two weekends of four major outdoor concerts, all free of charge.

Tauranga, New Zealand, March 28- June 15, 2017

Never-before-seen works of street art coloring the walls of one of New Zealand’s most loved coastal resort cities.  The city of Tauranga, in the Bay of Plenty, is proud to be hosting the inaugural Paradox Street Art Festival from March 28 – June 15 2017, showcasing leading international and local street artists. The event’s name stems from the paradoxical idea of bringing street art to a gallery whilst also turning the city into an outdoor gallery.

The event is set to include the most extensive assembly of the works of acclaimed street artist Banksy in the southern hemisphere.

More information plus photos of the artists’ previous works are available here.                                                                                                                                                                      

Johannesburg, South Africa, Itinerary with focus on art

There are many places in Africa to be excited about these days but for luxury Africa specialists Extraordinary Journeys, the South African city of Johannesburg, long overshadowed by its more cosmopolitan sister city of Cape Town, is really emerging as a dynamic destination for contemporary art and design. Johannesburg is boasting with creative outdoor sculpture exhibits, and contemporary art and design projects for the artsy travelers.

These days Johannesburg is much more than a mere stopover destination; with its history, culture and vibrant arts scene, Joburg pulsates with energy reminiscent of New York City. The city’s transformation is due in part to the emerging creative class who revitalize neighborhoods through redevelopment, maintenance and the arts – in particular, the Maboneng Precinct, an arts-gentrified urban neighborhood which contains Arts on Main, a mixed-use creative hub home to artists’ studios, galleries, eateries and various retail spaces.

Extraordinary Journeys has recently introduced a week-long itinerary focusing exclusively on artistic experiences in Johannesburg, with highlights including:

• Visit to Nirox Rocks Sculpture Garden, located on 38 acres of landscaped gardens and waterways within an extensive private nature reserve in the heart of the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site;

• Visits to KeyesArts Mile, an assemblage of smaller art and design galleries and showrooms including Everard Read Gallery and CIRCAGallery as well as more extensive collections such as Johannesburg Art Gallery (JAG) and Wits Art Museum;

• Private guided tours of the city with a local artist, private viewings of famous South African art works at Stevenson and Kalishnachov Gallery;

• Morning at David Krut Workshop (DKW) in “Arts on Main”, which represents multidisciplinary South African artist William Kentridge.

All itineraries may be customized based on customer preference and interests; Extraordinary Journeys recommends coming in September, where visits may coincide with the FNB Joburg Art Fair (celebrating its 10th year!; from September 8-10, 2017)

Paradox: Tauranga Street Art Festival

International and national artists’ biographies

Askew One

Based in Auckland, Askew One is recognized worldwide for his unique approach to graffiti art and remains at the forefront of the international art scene through constantly exploring new and exciting styles. He is self-taught in graphic design, illustration, photography, publishing, directing and editing music videos and moving images. With over 20 years of experience, his need to reach out to the world from his home in New Zealand has driven him. He is now an artist of global repute and the most highly respected aerosol artist from these shores.

Fintan Magee

Fintan Magee is a muralist based in Sydney Australia. He started drawing at a young age and became involved in the Australian graffiti scene at the age of 13. Moving away from traditional graffiti in 2010 his large-scale paintings often inhabit the isolated, abandoned and broken corners of the city. Drawing from personal experience and the mundane his figurative paintings are deeply integrated with the urban environment and explore themes of waste, consumption, loss, transition, and the environment. His works contain a sentimentality and softness influenced by children’s books. He has solidified his position as one of Australia’s leading public artists and has travelled extensively, completing projects all over the world.

Lucy McLauchlan

British born Lucy McLauchlan is an internationally recognised artist. Her monochromatic large-scale paintings are at home within galleries and museums just as they are covering multi-story building across Europe, gigantic billboards in China, huts of The Gambia, Italian water towers, a Norwegian lighthouse, car parks of Detroit, to the depths of abandoned subway tunnels in New York. And many places in between. Implicit within her work is a deep respect for nature as she draws inspiration from her immediate environment; allowing it to inform and direct what is an intuitive and explorative process.

Rone

Finding the friction point between beauty and decay is a thread that runs through much of Rone’s work. As a street artist best known for his haunting, stylised images of women’s faces, he understands better than most that beauty can be fleeting. Rone has gone from spearheading Melbourne’s fledgling street art movement in the early 2000s to being a celebrated fixture on the international street art scene. An inveterate traveller, his distinctive female muses have followed him around the world, and can be found – in various states of decay – peering out from beneath overpasses and emblazoned on walls everywhere from New York to New Zealand and many places in between. These days, Rone’s work is found as often in galleries as it is on the streets. His work has been acquisitioned by the National Gallery of Australia, commissioned by the National Gallery of Victoria to work with Jean Paul Gaultier and shown by galleries including Stolen Space in London, White Walls in San Francisco, Urban Nation in Berlin and Allouche Gallery in New York.

Sofles

Hailing from Brisbane but seldom there, Sofles is fast becoming one of the world’s most widely known and respected street artists. His video Limitless shot and cut by Selina Miles and released late in 2013, went viral. It received over 4 million views within 48 hours and currently sits at over 11 million. He is a member of the world champion graffiti art crew TMD and embodies the acronym by being The Most Dedicated of artists.

Charles & Janine Williams

Charles is a founding member and president of the TMD crew, a globally acclaimed collective of creative individuals from all corners of the world who have been pushing artistic boundaries of urban and graffiti art for the past 20 years. Janine is one of Aotearoa’s first female urban artists and has spent the past 15 years developing community art activations and projects with a strong focus on youth interaction and life intervention concepts. Partners in life as well as art, their style is a graphic, colourful outworking of the environmental and genealogical urban Māori heritage they are both are proud of. Married with for children, whanau (family) & hapori (community) are an integral and important part of their artistic journey.

Jacob Yikes

Yikes gained his diploma in fine arts from the Design and Arts College of New Zealand in Christchurch. He is DTR Crew’s newest recruit and is one of the city’s most active street artists. With his roots firmly planted in graffiti art, his style has developed to reflect a world of weird and wonderful characters that morph and merge to form elaborate, often bizarre, compositions. Inspired by his knowledge of decorative special effects, he is also pushing the boundaries of the art form by mixing exotic chemicals with spray paint to add a depth and uniqueness to his work.