Get ready to see St. Petersburg in many more colors than usual. An international forum uniting international street artists has opened in the city and is ready to cover its walls in spray paint.
This is a happy day for graffiti artists who have been outlaws for decades. Despite all possible obstacles, street artists would take their spray paint and stencils out and cover the walls of the cities in sophisticated pictures and ornaments. However, as soon as the street art story began, it immediately faced troubles with the authorities.
St. Petersburg’s graffiti art forum is an officially-sanctioned event. The city authorities have offered several walls and fences in the city center for street artists to embody their ideas. Sadly enough, many of those artworks will not stand for long, as the fences are temporary and the walls due to be demolished in the near future.
Bags. Street (Photo from www.grafffest.ru)
The graffiti forum has prepared a pleasant surprise for its guests. Within its purview, American graffiti analyst and artist Ewan Roth will be giving a performance and a series of lectures and mater classes in St. Petersburg. His work is completely harmless for the city’s walls and has absolutely nothing to do with vandalism, as it is based on applying digital technology in street art and creating something called video-graffiti.
The festival’s last day will feature an exhibition of dozens of graffiti works submitted for the festival’s competition.
The crowning final show will be held on the Palace Bridge near the Hermitage on Friday night. Ewan Roth’s own works will be screened along with video creations by Russian, American, British, French, Japanese and other artists.