A street art walking tour
Hong Kong Walls, 2024
Hong Kong, March 30th, 2024 — I love being a tourist in my own city, and today I am joining a free walking tour organised by HK Walls 2024 Festival, which is led by Alex from Wanderlust Hong Kong.
Spring has most definitely sprung in the territory, which brings rising temperatures and humidity, (March turned out to be one of the hottest months on record), but there is a good crowd gathered for the 90-minute tour.
We begin in Central and will finish up in the popular neighbourhood of Sheung Wan. After we are each provided with a headset by Alex to follow along in the event that we fall behind, we are warned that there will be a lot of steps to climb. Probably a good job that I didn’t head to the gym in the morning.
A few weeks after the tour, I revisited the route and in this post I have included a selection of some of my favourite work from the tour - it was tough narrowing this down!
Note - Websites and Instagram links have been provided throughout.
Seth
I only saw the initial outline for Seth’s work on the morning for the tour, so I was happy to return and find it complete. The wall was a huge space to fill, but I love how the artist incorporated the tree, slide and the awning. A big shout-out to the man sat on the right side of the image who helped provide some additional texture.
🔗 seth.fr
📷 seth_globepainter
Jaune
Since moving to Hong Kong, I have been endlessly fascinated by the bamboo scaffolding used in the construction of new buildings/renovation work, and for cleaning windows. Why not metal? But then the answer became obvious; bamboo is flexible and strong (very helpful during monsoon winds, and particularly during typhoons), and it’s quick to ensemble (haven’t done this myself, of course). Hong Kong is one of the few places left in the world that uses bamboo in scaffolding, so I was pleased to see it incorporated it into this piece.
🔗 www.art-of-jaune.com
📷 jaune_art
Jum
An artist at work! This was a real treat, and so I couldn’t help but take a few shots of JUM in action.
JUM’s work has a dream-like quality, the purple and blue hues with a few shocks of yellow. Gorgeous.
🔗 www.byjum.com
📷 by_jum_
Rabi
During and after…
I decided to focus on this image from this mural as it reminded me of Alice in Wonderful as she fell down the rabbit hole. I am not sure if this is what the artist intended, but somehow when I returned I found myself standing in almost the exact same spot from the tour itself and decided to take some photos from there.
🔗 www.rabitowing.com
📷 rabi__towing
SATR
The intricacy and simple colour palette of this mural blew me away, and it’s a beautiful use of the space. And I was pleased to get the shot in just before the woman walked out of view with her dogs. Timing is everything.
HERA of herakut
I was really excited to see HERA of herakut’s work as part of the festival. HERA has a distinctive style and from what I have seen from her other work (and here) is that animals play a crucial role in the imagery. I also loved how this piece had been painted on the walls of a school.
📷 hera_herakut
I haven’t included all of the artists work here from the walking tour/HK Walls festival, but if you would like to see more from this series, I have included some additional photography on my Instagram page: photosbybesty
Have a lovely week,
Sarah
I am enjoying seeing some of your pictures. I spent some time in Hong Kong in the early 90s and on my last visit there in 2011, things had changed so much. Fun to see your Substack. I live in Oregon and have a counseling background.
Wonderful! It reminds me of the street art of Penang, Malaysia. But, of course, HK is it's own distinct international flavor. 💖