When it comes to the street art scene, Hong Kong is not a name that is usually among the most talked about. In the ensuing years, mural art has ballooned in Hong Kong amid a growing scene with local and international artists and increasingly favourable attitudes towards art in the public, by the public. Murals spread across Hong Kong, with diverging degrees of style, quality and message.

2013 saw the launch of HKWalls, a street art festival that has helped ferment discussion about public art spaces in the city. The following year saw the Occupy movement and its accompanying flurry of creative expression in public spaces. The protests turned out to be a rife platform for the creation of street art, with students, activists and citizens leaving their marks on the city’s concrete and turning the streets into extraordinary art installations. Their visual messages and rebellions were catapulted into the world’s consciousness via the international media reporting on the protests. I always remind people to look up in Hong Kong. If we only pay attention to the street level, we’ll miss so many wonderful things. Here take a look at some of the pieces that brightening up Hong Kong walls.

外国街头艺术十分流行，到处都有街头艺术家的杰作，走在街上都觉得充满住艺术气息。台湾、韩国等国家有很多广为人知的壁画村，有彩绘墙壁做背景，怎样拍都能照出一张漂亮的相片，走到哪儿都想按下快门，即使手软也停不下来，把一切透过镜头保存下来。想一想都让人心动，立刻飞到国外沉醉于那美丽的世界。

其实香港人不用羡慕，因为这股壁画风气早已在香港街头渐渐萌芽。有没有发现，最近一两年在香港上环出现了很多街头涂鸦壁画？原来这一切都是来自一个很有意义的涂鸦艺术节。这个由香港艺术团体HKWalls主办的涂鸦艺术节已经连续举办两年，在太平山街跟荷里活道附近留下来了不少涂鸦作品。很多人趁著假日来找找看隐藏在四周的壁画，显然已经成为上环一个小小的私房景点。这些壁画大多在大厦的侧门和后门之处，本来是单调乏味、最没人注意的场所，成为了艺术家天马行空的创意天地。这些壁画需要人用心发现，转角偶然遇上的惊喜，更显独特。

Every city tells its own unique story by the street art it has. I am a big fan of it, because it’s made for everyone and like each and every piece of art, there is always a message to reflect upon. Singapore Funan IT Mall was closed for a complete overhaul. But if you walk by there now, you might do a double take: the hoardings are covered in graffiti. A local artist teamed up with the mall to make the hoardings his personal canvas. It's so nice to see some public art in the otherwise all-business part of town.

I’m not sure how my street art obsession began but it was definitely at some point during my travels, when my creativity was sparked and my mind opened up enough to explore what I had until then considered messy scribbles. Or maybe I just fell in love with the irreverence and rebelliousness I sensed behind those scribbles. Suffice it to say that the mere act of travel helps open up my mind to new forms of art - a creativity and curiosity fueled by the different sights and lifestyles.

As I travel, whenever I walk down a street and see splashes of color covering up an otherwise drab wall, I’ll stop and take a picture, imagining hooded youngsters slinking around at night, with paints and brushes and cans under their jackets, furtively slingling brush strokes at cement. I’ll probably be wrong about the image – but I won’t be wrong about loving what I see.

My photo essay on Ipoh's Burps & Giggles Cafe & SG's Potato Head Cafe《绘本里的咖啡时光》is published in today's LianheZaobao 联合早报缤纷版 dated 17 August 2017! 感谢、感恩! Thrilled to see it being featured nationwide in print! Special thanks to Lianhe Zaobao, you have made my day! :)

希望在任何地方的您，都能得到­这一份珍贵情谊及祝福。但愿人长久 千里共婵娟。

Found this wonderful piece of street art in Singapore at People's Park Complex Level 6 Open Carpark.

The one day Aliwal Urban Art Festival 2016 kicked off Singapore Art Week yesterday! Held in conjunction with Singapore Art Week, the event promises to bring out the best of the streets, channeling everything great about Singapore’s urban art scene at the ultimate urban district, Kampong Glam.

At Aliwal Arts Centre in Aliwal Street in the Kampong Glam area, urban art and street culture took centre stage with graffiti art showcases, a space for a skateboarding competition. Aliwal Art Centre is an enclave of art studios that has a wide range of tenants across visual and performing arts. The centre paid special tribute last night to street culture with their annual Aliwal Urban Arts Festival.

Local graffiti gurus from the Rascals (RSCLS)  performed in glorious street art at event. As a street art fan, I’m absolutely thrilled to see initiatives like this: I’ve always wanted to be in thriving street-art communities, as it always adds a distinctive flair to a place that makes it feel more personal, more yours. 

I love simply wandering around cities with my camera in hand, stopping whenever I want to take photos. During a trip in Perth, I wandered down unknown streets and laneways, which concealed magnificent street art pieces, often several meters in width and height, and behind skyscrapers, restaurants and small businesses. It was a wonderful way to really discover a new city and the creative side of its local artists. Street art is absolutely thriving in Perth. 

Perth’s hip inner suburbs have been undergoing a transformation over the past few years. Increasingly, alongside the trendy venues — on walls once neglected and covered in graffiti — you’ll find street art. Perth street art is known to be bizarre, ranging from faces out of place in a sea of swirling colour, to a snake eating its own tail. These random depictions are eye-catching, surreal and rising in growth, leaving people curious as to what’s around the corner.

These are not tags. This is real art. And real artists are behind it. They are often really stunning pieces and they’re very popular additions to the streets cape. Communities are recognising that street art can enrich their neighbourhoods. There are really talented people and it makes sense to engage them to help make the country's neighbourhoods more interesting.

I must emphasize that there is a difference between graffiti and street art. The beauty in street art is liberty. Graffiti is just writing with a spray can. Street art is using the same tools for design, for artistic expression.

I love the huge mural artwork on the EAST WEST DESIGN building in South Fremantle in my recent trip to Perth Western Australia. They have become some of the most talked about artworks in town, and for a good reason - they are spectacular.

If you spend any time at all in Fremantle then you might have noticed the exotic shop-fronts painted over the bland warehouse wall by the EAST WEST DESIGN furniture market. This shop is a little out of the way - I discovered it by accident when I was a little bit lost. But I was glad I stumpled upon it, because it's really cool! It's a home design store inside a big warehouse, and the whole thing is arranged like the biggest and best living room ever. The huge mural is the largest in Fremantle I believe and has got so many cute details that one can spend half an hour there discovering more quirky things. 

While I write about amazing street art from all around the world I travelled to, there is actually a lot going on in my hometown Singapore too. Honestly, I’ve never thought I couldn’t keep up with Singapore’s street art scene, but that’s what happened during this summer, so I’m writing a blogpost collecting what’s new on the streets of Chinatown, including some older works that I still hadn’t review in my blog.

Street art has transformed Chinatown's public spaces into open-air galleries, adding vibrancy to urban landscapes. The whole place has seen a glut of impressive new public artwork appear to the delight of many. The walls come to life with murals that are painted, filmed, and re-painted to create captivating moving images. The artists had painted in Chinatown to connect with its heritage, working through issues of identity, influence and geography with sweeping murals saturated with local culture. They brim with both color and emotion.

我很喜欢在新加坡牛车水老社区的巷弄内散步，老屋旧巷在有心人士的维护下，很像活化的有机体，每回造访都有意想不到的发现。

没有什么东西会像空白的石头表面一样，能够激发广泛的艺术创作欲望。

除了美食之外，牛车水也开始散发另一种魅力。在古迹区转角遇见的壁画，成为许多人游老社区的目的。沿途的一些古老牛车水建筑物很多开始被这些创意艺术家注入了新的生命，让整个地方呈现出了另一个面貌，也让来自世界各地或外地的到访者徒步走入老街时，见证古老的建筑物牛车水一路走来的岁月。栩栩如生的壁画刻画出牛车水古早味的生活百态。可见外墙脱落，砖瓦外露的情景，让人感叹光阴似箭，感慨万分。

Long-time readers know that I am a self-declared street-art-hunter. I wrote about street art in different cities and countries, also about murals and street art in Singapore. There are some which i have discovered at a Clarke Quay underground bridge along Singapore River where walls were covered by mural painting done by Social Creatives in collaboration with SG cares, successfully spiced up the ambient in the tunnel. Deep down in my heart, it is not just a simple mural or an art, I believe it encompasses a strong social statement that a community can work together to bring an idea across to the people locally and globally in times to come.

Social Creatives is a Singapore-based, non-profit arts social enterprise. Since its founding in 2007, the group has actively worked towards making Singapore a more colourful city, both visually and emotionally. Social Creatives collaborates with a wide range of people, including established and aspiring artists, community groups, corporate enterprises, people with disabilities, troubled youth and local volunteers. Through the joint creation of public artworks, the group’s aim is to bring people together to transform bland or ignored city spaces into colourful, vibrant destinations that attract locals and tourists alike, and to create a sense of connection among Singaporeans themselves, as well as between residents and their city.

If you have been following my blog, you'll probably realise that I have been documenting and collecting a series of photographs that emphasize the graffiti and street art in the cities I had travelled to as well as in my own hometown, Singapore. As a longtime lover in the graffiti and street art medium, I am always excited to discover what artists are doing around locally and around the world. There are tons of fantastic sites and daily blogs that are covering the continued evolution of the street art and graffiti medium, but there is nothing quite as good as seeing the real thing.

In recent years there has been an increasing interest in an ephemeral and viral form of art that is marking urban settings around the world, and has developed a flourishing sub-culture all its own. Now though, street art is going mainstream. 

Into its second edition, on last Saturday Aliwal Urban Art Festival returned with an exciting showcase of Singapore's growing street art scene. Organised by Aliwal Arts Centre, the festival's location in Kampong Glam is apt - the district is named one of Singapore's coolest neighborhoods by international press, with its rich history and culture mixed with on-trend shops and cafes. The festival brought together some of Singapore's most exciting street artists from RSCLS, a local popular artist collectives that seeks discourse and disharmony through random acts of artistic collaboration that challenges artists out of their comfort zones. 

我在上个周末星期六实拍阿里哇街文化艺术节 (Aliwal Urban Art Festival), 也同时亲眼目睹了街头艺术家们进行艺术创作。眼前一亮的创意街头艺术吸引了大量观赏者。活动现场包括街舞、街头涂鸦等街头文化，在一开始就为活动定下了酷炫又刺激的基调。据主办方介绍，这场大型涂鸦活动是阿里哇文化艺术节涂鸦主题活动。街头涂鸦表演迅速勾起现场大家的兴致和童心，你难以想象人们站在巨幅的涂鸦作品下一动不动地欣赏着的场景，这种街边艺术确实让一些不起眼的街区变成了供许多民众喜爱街边艺术欣赏的好地方。

那一天的涂鸦活动聚集来自本地街头艺术家组织RSCLS涂鸦好手，创作总长达50米，长度足足有四辆货车加起来的涂鸦墙。我很佩服那些有才的涂鸦者，画在墙上或地上，惟妙惟肖，立体感很强，很艺术的样子。每个涂鸦师都有自己的个性，通过涂鸦作品他们可以自由地表达自己的想法。街头涂鸦使用的是一种专用的涂鸦喷漆，不仅画面设计、字体结构、透视效果要学习，甚至连按压喷头的力度，都需要一点点琢磨。 按的力度小，喷头出来的漆更细、面积小。一整面的墙壁，要用细小的喷头一点点覆盖，常常需要数个小时。经过3个多小时肆意喷绘，一幅一幅极具梦幻色彩的涂鸦作品逐渐呈现在众人眼前。

A happy start to a new year! My recent travel photo documentary on Ipoh wall murals located at back lane has been published In today's 联合早报 dated 2 January 2015! Thrilled to see it 《怡保休罗街老店后巷壁画, 故仔街》being featured nationwide in print! Special thanks to Lianhe Zaobao, zbNOW/早报现在, you have made my day! Thank you so much! :-)

Ipoh, the capital city of Perak state, was once a booming tin mining town during the British colonial era. However, the collapse of tin prices and closure of tin mines in the late 1970s meant that the town lost some of its lustre over the years. Activities slowed down and migrants moved out, leaving behind grand old buildings. For street art lovers, there is a new attraction in Ipoh Old Town that is certain to pique their interest - a set of seven murals. The beautiful murals, akin to Penang's Zacharevic artwork, are painted on the back walls of several old shops in a lane which connects Jalan Masjid and Jalan Sultan Iskandar Shah (Hugh Low Street). The paintings were painted on old, heritage buildings, an effort which i found commendable in preserving these rare gems. The paintings highlight the many cultures of Malaysia with a pinch of cheekiness with popular childhood games like hide-and-seek and mother hen, and a beautiful waterfall scenery, amongst others. This back alley is also filled with colourful wall murals depicting life from the simpler days when pleasure was attained from blowing bubbles and hiding around corners.

提及 “艺术”, 大抵都以“高尚, 难以捉摸, 遥不可及” 这样的词语来形容, 可其实, 艺术不会因为你是平民而对你视若无睹, 也不会因为你是王公而对你青眼有加, 儿时在白墙上的涂鸦, 夜晚安眠中美轮美奂的梦, 又何尝不是艺术的世界, 在这纷扰又急速的社会中, 你有多久没停下来欣赏一张壁画? 你有多久没有听艺术家讲过自己的故事了？

怡保在这两年内出现 "本地风" 后巷壁画热潮, 渐成怡保拍照亮点去处. 怡保新街场谦街及休罗街之间后巷, 目前是怡保最多壁画的后巷, 而作为本地画家赖伟权, 是率先也是目前为止唯一在后巷作画的画家, 为两排百年老店后巷留下一系列壁画. 至今, 该条后巷的大小壁画累积至22幅左右, 並奠定了一定的名气.

我不久前探访过槟城, 看到那里的壁画掀起遊客热潮, 我也希望怡保也有这样的艺术. 怡保这里后巷多得是, 所以一样可在这些壁上画, 为怡保后巷打造文化气息, 也希望吸引更多遊客到来欣赏. 这一次我决定走入怡保市看看它今年崛起的壁画热潮, 究竟本地画家赖伟权和伙伴们如何美化怡保市和增添艺术气息.