It's been a couple of months now since I went to Malaysia (where has the time gone!) and with Christmas so soon after I got back, all of the arts and crafts I was doing were appropriately festive so the blog obviously followed suit. I absolutely love Christmas, and love doing Christmas crafts and then blogging about it, but it does mean that I haven't yet had the chance to share my memories and experiences of the places I visited in Malaysia, like Penang; an island on the north-west coast of Malaysia. Whilst in Penang, we spent most of our time in the multicultural capital, Georgetown. Here, we visited places like Chinatown, LIttle India, the clan houses and the clan jetty. It was such an interesting place, full of so many different sights, sounds and smells. Having come from Kuala Lumpur, Penang felt like such an authentic experience of Malaysia. As we wandered around Georgetown, we came across so many paintings on the street walls which I just absolutely loved, so I wanted to share some photos of them with you.
When I got back, I did some research and found out that several of the art pieces and murals ('Boy on the Bike' and 'Little Boy with Pet Dinosaur') are by Lithuanian born artist Ernest Zacharevic, who has been dubbed "Malaysia's answer to Banksy". Many of the pieces were created for the 2012 Georgetown Arts and Crafts Festival. Prior to this, Georgetown apparently had no graffiti or street art whatsoever. Things certainly changed following this though, with Artists for Stray Animals installing a dozen or so feline-friendly pieces, such as 'Love me like your fortune cat' and 'The real Bruce Lee would never do this', for the 2013 Georgetown Festival. The following year, local artist WK Setor created the 'I want Pau!' mural which shows two children reaching out of a window towards a bicycle. Unfortunately I haven't been able to find out who the Penguin graffiti is by, which is a shame, as for some reason I find it so cute - it's like a child pretending to be a lawyer!
What do you think of this street art?
Have you been to Penang?
Let me know in the comments below!
♥