VividWgtn 2017

words by ben stephens

Stick with me here – Street art used to be the General Pants Co. of the fashion world – You wanted to check it out and see what was cool, but you realised that it was mostly rubbish, scattered with a couple of classic pieces and the people around it were rather pushy.

Thankfully, with education and a progressive thought pattern, comes understanding. Street art in 2017, for the most part, is made up of talented artists that use their art to challenge your day-to-day thinking by having their art showcased in your world.

It can bring a community together by holding up a mirror to reflect the best parts of the city. It can start a conversation with a complete stranger. The best pieces are those that make you study the artwork, check your bias and then laugh to yourself at the cut through it offers.

It’s important to draw a line between that of street art and graffiti. According to a new report, the Auckland City Council has a graffiti clean-up budget of $4.5 million, which is rather high considering. Graffiti or tagging is more of an ego thing and goes off on its own tangent of ‘art’ and disrupts the idea of what street art tries to do.

Timely, the good team over at VividWgtn are about to kick off another month of celebrations of all that is good in the local street art community. From a post up competition (enter here) to the Bond Street Paint Up, featuring a strong lineup of local artists, the festival aims to develop the Wellington street art scene.

For the full lowdown on the festival and to check out the rad artist lineup that’s involved with VividWgtn 2017, check out their Facebook HERE.

VividWgtn 2017 takes over the city from March 12

#chimp has painted a couple of #gashub substations around welly this summer #streetart #wgtn #wgtnstreetart

A post shared by Vivid (@vividwgtn) on Feb 10, 2017 at 3:12pm PST