Street Art World Tour

Published in

The Other Side of the Mountain

8 min readAug 6, 2017

I love hunting street art. When travelling in a new city or town one of my favourite activities is to seek out the examples of local talent. This is a free activity that takes me off the beaten tourist trail to visit areas of the city I would not normally have planned to visit. In reality, most of these places are not that far from city centres or transport hubs and can be reached very easily. Very few of these places are unpleasant or dangerous.

Street art is not tagging.

Tagging is defined by the urban dictionary as; a personal signature...which may consist of block or bubble lettering.

This type of art has existed for thousands of years and epitomises the human response to existential uncertainty. It is in essence a statement to future generations and the universe in general saying: I existed, I was here.

“I was here” 35,000 years ago - oldest known cave art, Indonesia.

“I was here” 2017 - tag on underpass, Tubigen, Germany.

We are all familiar with modern tagging, either as giant multi-coloured ‘bombs’ on subway tunnels or train carriages;

Typical 'bomb' tag - Munich. Germany

Or the classic, so and so loves so and so

Seno is someone’s Bae (before all else), Munich, 2017

Tagging is NOT street art

In contrast, street art is more than a scream of existential angst, it has a purpose and a message. Street art is big and bold, sometimes covering entire buildings, not scribbled on a toilet wall. Street art is cool, is free and can be found in any place humans have existed since whenever.

Conditions must be perfect

Certain conditions are required for the production of high quality street art.

The first is the existence of a group of talented local artists. These people could be world famous artists, but most often they are just a bunch of teenagers with spray cans in need of some inspiration.

The second condition is a cityscape that offers a good canvas. Wide, tall walls constructed of uniform material are ideal. These spaces need to be free of facades and available for beautification. They can vary from underpass columns to construction sites, to entire faces of apartment blocks

All conditions (including cranes) would have been required to create this piece of art.

The third condition is that the art be in a public place, where it can be easily accessed and viewed, by anyone, for free. One of the best things about street art is that, by its very design, it is free-to-view, being placed in a public area, sometimes in the early hours of the morning, with no agenda and without charge. The same cannot be said for the endless parade of unwanted product placement and advertising displayed on almost every surface of a city, or 'famous' art works locked in a museum that charges you access.

What follows is my collection of images from around the world. These are not necessarily the best from each place I visited, just the best I saw.

Tulum, Mexico

Ganesh (hindu elephant god) blessing an SUV

Some art travels with you

How the leopard got his spots

Deaths head storm trooper stencil

RIP Bob Marley

Melbourne, Australia

Winter is coming- advertising for ice bar

London, England

Sculpture memorial of the The Blitz, WWII.

William Shakespare at the rebuilt Globe Theatre

Reyjavik, Iceland

Perfect conditions combined with 22 hours of sunlight a day in the summer plus some boredom.

Breda, Netherlands

Where the local council is making a dedicated effort to collaborate with local artists to give the town some colour.

Birds of suburban beautification

Local art projected at night

Utrecht, Netherlands

Half pipe decoration

Arnhem, Netherlands

Apartment block beautification

Dusseldorf, Germany

Underpass panorama and close ups

LGBT plea for peace on the side of a church in a small town south of Dusseldorf.

Cologne, Germany

The best street art makes an ironic statement, a political or social critique that sparks the imagination and makes you question the cultural and social structures we take for granted and shape our everyday lives. Banksy is a great example of this form of street art.

Dali lama gagged with a Chinese flag

Mannheim, Germany

Stuggart, Germany

Mother Mary, Die Hall of Fame underpass

Tubingen, Germany

Architecture and art combined

A entire painted building

Prague, Czech Republic

In the 1970’s-90’s street art was synonymous with political activism and the desire for social change under the communist regime.

Lennon wall - commerating the death of John Lennon. The wall was repainted white one night in the 90’s by local artists to provide space for the next generation’s ideas. They haven’t disappointed

Berlin, Germany

Some of the best street art in Berlin is on some remaining section of the Berlin Wall at the East Side Gallery.

An angel carries someone over the wall

Another brick in the wall - ironic images from Pink Floyds 'The Wall' album art

A soviet made Trabant crashes through the wall

Escaping over the wall

The blank back side of East Side Gallery - what the wall may have looked like from West Berlin before the street art

A preserved piece of grafitti on the western side of the wall.

Classic example of a grafitti 'bomb' defacing street art

The most famous mural, ‘God help me survive this deadly love’ is a reproduction of a photograph depicting an embrace between a Russian and German politician celebrating 30 years of communist totalitarian government