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See What Happens When Five Street Artists Are Given Total Freedom In An Abandoned Warehouse

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FOR GRAFFITI ARTISTS Sofles, Fintan Magee, Treas, and Quench, having a whole warehouse as a canvas for a day must have felt like Christmas morning. For their “Limitless” installation, the artists teamed up with Ironlak, an Australian aerosol company, and were filmed transforming the building from an industrial space, to a wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling work of art.

Though perhaps contrary to the core tenets of street art, this film, and the acts portrayed within, were shot legally in a soon-to-be-demolished site in Brisbane.

They also look like they had a blast doing it (no pun intended).

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Tour The Brooklyn Neighborhood That's Become New York's New Street Art Mecca

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Bushwick Collective Street Art 14

Queens' longtime graffiti mecca 5Pointz was recently whitewashed ahead of its imminent demolition, to be replaced by luxury condos.

But street art culture is alive and well in other parts of the city. In Brooklyn, the Bushwick Collective at Troutman Street and St. Nicholas Avenue is emerging as a new destination for street artists.

Joseph Ficalora, a longtime neighborhood resident, curates the vast outdoor art gallery. He's thrilled with the transformation after seeing crime and graffiti plague the area.

Ficalora, whose family owns a steel fabrication plant in Bushwick, coordinated with other local building owners to find and provide empty walls for street artists. They have come from as far as France and Italy, as well as right here in the U.S. like the Iranian duo Icy and Sot, who moved for political asylum. 

"The place is buzzing," street art aficionado Spencer Elzey told Business Insider. "There are cycles where two or three new walls go up in a week or two."  

Elzey gave us an insider's tour of the Bushwick Collective, starting at Jefferson Street and Wyckoff Avenue.

The Bushwick Collective is just two years old, but it's already become a thriving scene for street artists. This lion was created by artist ND'A near Jefferson Street.



The area, an outdoor art gallery, is now home to dozens of murals, some by well-known artists. Buff Monster, a street artist who is featured in the Banksy movie "Exit Through the Gift Shop," painted these ice cream characters.



The street artist known as Phlegm came to Bushwick all the way from London to paint this giraffe in his signature style.



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A Giant Piece Of 'Flappy Bird' Art Just Appeared On A Paris Street

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This large piece of art paying homage to Flappy Bird, star of the famously addictive iPhone game, was just spotted on a street in Paris. flappy bird street art

According to Complex, the new tag comes courtesy of French street artist Invader, who's known for his video game-inspired art.

If you happen to be in Paris, you can check out the bird at 81 Rue De La Boetie. Thanks to Street Art Anarchy for letting us run their photo. 

SEE ALSO: Here's How Twitter Engineers Reacted To Ellen's Record-Breaking Oscar Selfie

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This Street Art Animation Is Completely Mesmerizing

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INSA artIf you were to pass British artist INSA's street art in your local neighborhood, you wouldn't think there was anything especially remarkable about it. 

However, the internet sees things differently.  

In an "online meets offline" creative endeavor, the artist turns his street paintings into online GIFs.

To accomplish this, INSA  usually under commission by different brands  paints several layers onto outdoor canvases around the world, records each image, and then transforms them into animated, moving GIFs.

"Mixing retro internet technology and labor intensive painting, INSA creates slices of infinite un-reality, cutting edge art for the tumblr generation," the artist says on his blog. 

Check out some of his mind-boggling creations below:

INSA art

INSA art

INSA art

INSA art

INSA

INSA art

INSA art

SEE ALSO: A Woman Quit Her Job To Travel For 2 Years And Took These Incredible Photos In Africa

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Take A Virtual Tour Of Brazil's Iconic Painted Streets Celebrating The World Cup

'People Still Hate Each Other': Inside A Bosnian City That Hasn't Recovered From The Civil War

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Mostar

The bloodiest conflicts in Europe since WWII, the Yugoslav Wars in the 1990s had a devastating effect that some areas still haven't recovered from.

The city of Mostar, which now lies in the southern part of Bosnia and Herzegovina, still shows signs of war, both physically and psychologically. Bullet-riddled and half-leveled buildings remain untouched and un-repaired, standing as de facto monuments to the lives lost in the region's ethnic clashes. Official monuments to the war have been destroyed, pointing to lingering tensions.

Mostar is rich in history. When Bosnia was part of the Ottoman Empire, the city was a crucial stopping point on trade routes to the Adriatic Sea. A centuries-old arched bridge over the Neretva River, known as the Stari Most, was a renowned landmark and became a symbol for the town and the Empire.

In 1992, whenYugoslavia was crumbling and multi-ethnic Bosnia and Herzegovina declared independence from an increasingly nationalist, Serb-led Yugoslav government in Belgrade. Bosnian and Croat Mostar soon fell under a lengthy siege from Serb forces. For 18 months, heavily-armed Serb paramilitaries fought combined Bosnian and Croatian forces along a front-line running through the center of town.

Later, the Bosnian and Croatian armies began fighting against each other, pushing Bosnian Muslims out of the Western part of the city and causing further destruction and casualties. Many historical structures were razed during the conflict, including the Stari Most, which collapsed under Croat shelling in November of 1993. 

Photojournalist and human rights activist Giles Clarke recently visited Mostar to document the current state of the city. Clarke's guide, a former soldier for the Bosnian army, still lives in Mostar.

He joined the Bosnian army after it's break with the Croats in 1993. The guide, who asked not to be named, was shot and injured twice during the conflict. "There were 2000 grenades falling a day. Mostar was left in dust and flames," he told Clarke.

Unrest still brews in Mostar, despite nearly 20 years of peace. Earlier this year, political gridlock and a down economy sparked protests and riots in Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina, as well as in Mostar. More recently, elections in Mostar were postponed, due to conflicts between Bosniak and Croat parties. 

"It's still divided," Clarke's guide says. "The government is still the same people from 20 years before."

 

For centuries, many faiths and ethnicities lived side by side in Mostar. During the war, however, many mosques, churches and monasteries were left in ruins.MostarGunfire and heavy shelling decimated the town during the nine-month siege of Mostar in 1993.MostarNow, many older ruins and modern bombed-out buildings remain side-by-side, untouched.The population fell dramatically during the war, although 20 years later numbers have returned to pre-war levels of 113,000 or so citizens.mostarThis opulent former hotel still lies in ruins close to the middle of the city.MostarA newly reconstructed version of Mostar's treasured Stari Most, or "Old Bridge," was unveiled in 2004. In 2013, Slobodan Praljak, the commander of the Croatian Defence Council, was one of six people sentenced to 20 years in prison by International Criminal Tribunal for ordering the destruction of the bridge, among other war crimes charges.MostarThis former bank building was under construction and almost completed when the war reached Mostar in 1992. It was quickly overrun by the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) and became a favored sniper haunt, as it bordered the Bosnian army lines in central Mostar. MostarHere's what the lobby of this "sniper central" looks like today. Both combatants and civilians were targeted from this building.MostarDiscarded sandbags used to protect members of the Bosnian Army 20 years ago still sit untouched.MostarClarke's guide stands at the exact spot where he stood just over 20 years ago and fired at Croats below, after the JNA left and conflict grew between the Bosnians and Croatians. "I was 17 years old when I joined the Bosnian Army. It was the only thing I could do. It was here, in this building, where we held the lines for months on end. At night, we would sit behind the sandbags and play cards," he says.mostarThe eastern suburbs of Mostar, where many Bosnians were holed up during the nine month siege, was flattened by heavy Croat shelling. MostarA memorial sculpture commemorating Bosnian Army casualties in Mostar was vandalized just weeks after it was unveiled in early 2014.MostarThis wall, built after the war ended in 1995, now gets looted for bricks as rebuilding slowly continues in many areas. The price of construction material has risen dramatically in recent years.MostarA homeless man in Mostar sat and talked with Giles about the state of the city today. "It's better than it was 20 years ago but now things are bad in different way. There's a new kind of violence — an economic strangling that leaves the poor behind. Many things are so expensive now ... and people still hate each other."MostarAfter the riots and revolution of Kiev in early 2014, the citizens in several central European cities took to the streets to express anger towards their corrupt governments. Mostar was no different. In mid-February 2014, buildings were burnt and protests turned violent, though they were quickly quashed by well-armed police. The heavily armed police have a strong presence on the streets today.MostarMuharem "Mušica" Hindić, a long time activist, protests against government corruption in a park in central Mostar. He holds a sign reading "New York- Say Now is Enough." The 2014 protests mark the largest outbreak of public anger over high unemployment and two decades of political inertia in the Balkan country of 3.8 million people since the end of its civil war.MostarMostar has become a center for cultural expression in the Balkans as well. Many of the bombed-out buildings are blank canvasses for street artists. An annual street art festival attracts artists from all over the world.MostarA mural in Mostar depicts local Bosnian revolutionaries still lauded as heroes. Mostar has had a long and rich history of resistance and underground political organizers, particularly evident during the dark years in Bosnia during WWII.MostarHere, graffiti which reads "Choose Life, Not drugs" is painted outside the walls of the Mostar prison. Built after the war, this place now houses common criminals as well as Serbs and Croats who committed atrocities in the Bosnian war.MostarThe guide is pictured here in the ruins where he served as foot soldier 20 years ago. "It's very important that we do not forget and that we somehow teach the new generation about what happened. It can never happen again here."Mostar

(All captions by Giles Clarke)

SEE ALSO: UNREST IS SPREADING: Bosnia Hasn't Been This Chaotic Since The War

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This Video Game Is So Hard, You Need To Go Around The World In Order To Win

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Space Invader Paris

For the most part, even the hardest video games can be completed from the comfort of your own home. Or sometimes even on the train on the way home from work. It might take you hours or days or weeks, but you don't need much more than some snacks and perhaps a coffee to get you through those hard levels. 

Flash Invaders

But then there's "Flash Invaders," an iOS and Android game where in order to win and get the most points, you have to visit every continent. 

The game is the brain child of a French artist who goes by the name Invader. He has an art project, called "Space Invaders," where he installs pictures of classic video game characters.  

"The idea is to 'invade' cities all over the world with characters inspired by first-generation arcade games, and especially the now classic 'Space Invaders,'"he writes on his website. "I make them out of tiles, meaning I can cement them to walls and keep the ultra-pixelated appearance."

"Flash Invaders" is like a scavenger hunt to find these art installations, which are located in a bunch of different cities all over the world. After downloading the app, players have to look for the artwork, then snap a picture, or "flash" the art.

"I have this idea for a long time of giving to the public a way to participate to the process," Invader said in an email to Business Insider. "That's what happened with 'Flash Invaders' — the public is not only a viewer anymore, it becomes a player who has to walk in my steps. It is a video game taking place in the reality."

The app uses image-recognition software to compare the picture you take with what's in its database. And it uses a built-in GPS verification system so there's no cheating, according to Vandalog blogger RJ Rushmore, who tried it out. That means you can't just upload a Google image of the art — you have to actually be in the same physical location. 

Each art piece is worth a certain number of points, "depending on its size, composition and where it is," according to Invader. People play against each other; the person with the most points, wins.  

"The idea is also to 'Flash' a maximum of space invaders and for that [you have] to visit many places in many cities," Invader said. 

He's even shot one of his art pieces into the stratosphere. "I had this idea in mind for a while — to send a space invader back to space! I didn’t know how to do it, but was possible to do it in a very DIY way,"he told ANIMAL New York in an interview last year. "The piece went in the stratosphere with a small camera and the images are so amazing that I decided to make a documentary about it."

Thankfully, that piece isn't included in the "Flash Invaders" game. 

The game has gotten pretty popular. But Invader says he's not sure how it's been spreading so quickly. "I just put it on the Apple Store and Google Play and wrote few words about it on my Instagram," he says.

As of this writing, 785 players are participating and have racked up more than half a million points. 

SEE ALSO: 14 of the coolest video game Easter eggs in the world

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A Street Artist in Michigan Creates Whimsical Charcoal Cartoons That Rival Banksy

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Since 1987, self-taught artist David Zinn's playful chalk drawings have been popping up around Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Sluggo

In his "Lost and Unfounded" street art series, he creates playful characters and temporary illustrations on the fly using chalk, charcoal, and found objects.

Sluggo and Philomena

Zinn told Business Insider that he chooses locations that are either unimpressive or easily ignored (cracks, curbs, or pipe covers), and invents interesting ways to incorporate his imaginary friends into the landscape. 

The majority of his work is a playful trompe-l'œil effect that uses the surroundings to make the cartoons appear 3D and as if they're coming to life.

The creatures that show up most often in his work are a green monster named "Sluggo" and a flying pig named "Philomena." All of Zinn's drawings usually feature some sort of cartoon animal and are a big hit with the children in Ann Arbor.

Sluggo

"Philomena was first requested by a young girl I met while drawing in front of a market," Zinn told Business Insider. "Since then, I have found that flying pigs have a strong positive effect on many people."

David Zinn

"I think it's because the phrase 'that will happen when pigs fly' is such an inherently glum and discouraging phrase, and so any demonstration of porcine aviation is seen as a symbol of encouragement," he added. 

David Zinn's street art

Sluggo, the green monster, was inspired by a series and cracks in the sidewalks and now shows up in drawings, “whenever he feels like it."

David Zinn

As for using chalk as his medium, Zinn enjoys the freedom that comes from the fact that his drawings are ephemeral.

“Knowing that the art will wash away in the rain makes it easier to enjoy the process of creating it," Zinn told us. "There is nothing that needs to be framed or sold or stored away after the drawing is done, and very little planning beforehand to make the art suitable as a permanent presence in the community."

David Zinn

"Since the installations are so fleeting, the experience of seeing one in real life is both more surprising and more exceptional," he said.

For more of David Zinn’s work you can check out his Facebook page, and keep scrolling to see more of our favorite designs.

A fish peeks out from its shallow basin in the sidewalk.

David Zinn

An octopus climbs out of an imaginary pool as people walk by.

David Zinn

A rabbit looks forlornly out of its window in the brick wall.

David Zinn

A cat wails against its imaginary imprisonment as a mouse sits guard.

David Zinn

SEE ALSO: This Street Art Animation Is Completely Mesmerizing

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Banksy’s New Street Art In His Hometown Of Bristol Has Already Been Vandalized

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Girl With Pierced Eardrum

The British street artist Banksy has just published a rendition of Vermeer’s famous painting "Girl With a Pearl Earring."

He replaced the earring with an outdoor security alarm for a much more Banksy-esque piece he calls "Girl with a Pierced Eardrum."

The mural in Bristol, UK was vandalized within 24 hours of its first appearance. On Tuesday, the work was found with dark paint thrown across the woman’s face, according to BBC.   

The new street art proves that reports of Banksy’s arrest were a complete hoax.

A false story on Monday claimed that Banksy’s London art studio had been raided and thousands of dollars of counterfeit money and future vandalism projects had been found, according to The Independent

BanskyThis is also not the first time that Banksy’s work has appeared in his hometown of Bristol. His painting Mobile Lovers was seen there earlier this year, which sparked a debated over the ownership of the mural between the youth club whose door it was painted on and the city council. 

The secretive Banksy intervened and sent a letter to the owner of the youth club saying he could use it to raise money. The mural was sold for over over $650,000 to keep the youth club open.

 Banksy

For more of Banksy's work, head over to his artist's website where he posts updates and photos of his street art

SEE ALSO: Banksy Has Triggered A Beautiful And Witty Renaissance In London's Vandalism

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This Is The Quintessential Banksy Work

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Everyone's talking about Banksy yet again, after the celebrated graffitist's clever rendition of Vermeer's "Girl with a Pearl Earring" on the side of a building.

If you're struggling to understand what Banksy is about, consider this image of his 2010 work on the side of a building in San Francisco's Mission District:

banksy

Arguably one of his most important works, "This'll look nice when framed" ironically points to Banksy's philosophy that art can exist outside of traditional venues like museums, galleries, or displays in people's homes. It can be found anywhere in our busy world.  In the photograph above, two people are relaxing on the roof beside Banky's stencil. As far as we can tell, they just happened to end up next to this work of art, rather than going out of their way to view art in a formal setting.

 

The stencil's punchline is that it's not for sale. It will never look nice in a frame because it cannot be framed. 

In further irony, however, even this stencil has been manufactured into prints that people have put up for sale.

Now click here to see 24 more of Banksy's cleverest works »

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Artists Made This Giant Gif That Can Be Seen With Satellites

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Gif fiti art Rio de Janeiro visible from space painting 2

Artists don't usually have access to satellite imagery to help them in their creations.

But when a British artist was given that chance, the result was a massive gif cobbled together from photos taken from space.

INSA, as he calls himself, is the brains behind the gigantic project, which is really a large-scale version of an "gif-iti," an art form he pioneered.

"Gif-iti is an idea that I came up with," INSA explains in a video about the project.

"I paint a wall, take a photo, repaint a wall, take a photo, do this until I've got a smooth motion to then upload these images into a computer, make them into an animated gif."

Here's an example of what that looks like, made by INSA himself:

Thanks to the 576 manhours provided by whiskey maker Ballantine's (yes, the video is essentially a cool ad), INSA was able to create gif-iti over 154,774 square feet of ground in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil — that's more than two and a half football fields — just across a marina from one of the city's airports.

The area was painted and repainted, while two Pleiades satellites 431 miles above the earth took an image on each of four days. Put together, the result is this vibrant, pulsating patchwork of yellow and pink hearts, a recurring image in INSA's art.

INSA gif iti space Rio de Janeiro art

Ballantine's approached INSA about large-scale ideas he might have in mind. "I said I want to paint something big enough to be seen from space and to animate it," the artist told Mashable.

Space Gif INSA artist Rio de Janeiro 2

The colossal project resulted in the most sprawling gif of INSA's collection, big enough that satellites can clearly see it from space with a little zoom action. Pretty impressive!

For more of INSA's gif-iti, you can check out his Tumblr page dedicated to the novel art-form. He also shared his own version of the "space gif-iti", as seen below, on his Instagram.

SEE ALSO: Mind-Blowing Images Of Earth From Space

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Banksy just published a new video from Gaza

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Banksy, the elusive British street artist, has just published a new video from Gaza, a Palestinian city on the Mediterranean coast that was the centre of an Israel-Palestine conflict last summer

The new video, posted to YouTube, surpassed 100,000 views in just a few hours.

Banksy also posted photographs of his work to his website.

In his new satirical video, Banksy invites followers to "make this the year you discover a new destination," such as Gaza, which is only accessible thanks to underground illegal tunnels.

Banksy in Gaza 1

He also painted four graffiti stencils while in Gaza. One of them is this writing:

Banksy in Gaza 5

Another painting is a portrait of a cat with a big, pink ribbon. The cat is meant to play with the children of Gaza, who have no other toy since the 2014 war.

Banksy Gaza Three

This graffiti is a carousel of children, in Banksy's typical stencil technique.

Banksy Gaza Two

The last work is inspired by The Thinker, a 19th century bronze statue by the French sculptor August Rodin.

Banksy Gaza One

Here is the full video:

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An artist drew incredible sketches of Tokyo street life on coffee cups

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Whether it's to show off the fancy heart-shaped milk swirl sitting on top of their latte, or to point out the mistake the barista made in spelling their name, people enjoy using coffee as the subject of their Instagrams.

Tokyo-based illustrator Adrian Hogan doesn't just Instagram coffee cups though, he makes them into art and then posts videos of them to his account.

According to CNN, Hogan — an Australia native — came to Japan five years ago to teach English. He then went back to Australia to study fine art and returned to Japan in 2013.

After being invited to paint on coffee cups at his friend Mariya Suzuki's solo exhibition "Coffee People," Hogan continued to sketch on cups, drawing scenes from Tokyo's busy streets.

Hogan posts these coffee cups sketches to his Instagram account in an intriguing way. He films his hand holding and rotating the cup, with the scene he just sketched as a background. The result is an impressive visual that shows just how closely Hogan's sketches mimic the reality of Tokyo street life.

The illustrator draws everything from parks to busy street corners.

Here are some of Hogan's most recent videos.

 on

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SEE ALSO: 46 stunning Instagram photos that will inspire you to travel the world

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NOW WATCH: You'll want to travel to Turkey after watching this incredible video

A mysterious artist is posting cartoons attacking Goldman Sachs and Hillary Clinton around New York City

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Goldman Rats

A street artist has set their sights Goldman Sachs and is putting up stickers around New York City attacking the investment giant. 

Business Insider has seen two of the stickers, which both feature a version of the company's logo modified to say "Goldman Rats" and an image of a cartoonish rodent sticking out its tongue. 

One of the stickers (pictured above) is captioned "PHOOEY ON YOU, POORS." I spotted it in the subway last week, but it seems to have been around much longer. A Pinterest user based in New York took a picture of the same sticker about one year ago.

The second sticker also includes a shot at Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. Text surrounding a picture of the cartoon rat declares, "WE'VE SELECTED HILLARY FOR YOU SUBMIT, POORS."

I spotted the Clinton sticker in a Brooklyn subway station last week, but it seems to have appeared in multiple locations. A blog dedicated to Brooklyn street art posted a picture taken of one of the stickers last month

The Clinton sticker is clearly relatively new. In the sticker, the "H" in "Hillary" is copied from her campaign logo, which was unveiled when she launched her campaign in April. It echoes a line of attack that has been used by one of Clinton's Democratic rivals, former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley (D), who has suggested Goldman Sachs would like to see her in the White House.

It's not clear who made the stickers..

The "Phooey" sticker bears a graffiti signature, but I can't make out what it says. If you know more please get in touch.

Check out the Clinton "Goldman Rats" sticker below. 

Goldman Rats Hillary Clinton 

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The graffiti in Greece shows just how angry its citizens really are

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RTX1EKIN

In the midst of a six-year recession, Greece's public is reeling from the effects of unemployment rates that are more than double the eurozone average.

Just this week, the International Monetary Fund announced that if the country fails to make the $1.8 billion debt payment that's due in less than two weeks, there would be no grace period. 

Greece's street artists have been voicing their grievances all over the public walls of the cities, publicizing their impressions of the IMF and Greece's current government. From simple tags, to more extravagant statements - take a look at these street artists' take on Greece's current state of affairs.

(Captions by Sarah Jacobs and Reuters) 

Violent demonstrations broke out in Athens in 2010 due to austerity measures. Here, riot police are on the scene. Behind them, a message on a bank wall informs the International Monetary Fund to get out.



Police stand guard outside a hotel in Athens while protesters rally in response to a Greek pensioner's recent suicide due to the economy.



Greece's new left-wing government announced this February that they will not take actions that would hurt the share values of the country's banks and does not plan to appoint party officials at key management posts.



See the rest of the story at Business Insider

Detroit police have issued a felony arrest warrant for famed street artist Shepard Fairey

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shepard fairey

Detroit police want street artist Shepard Fairey. 

On Wednesday, police issued a felony arrest warrant, accusing him of property crimes that could land him a penalty of five years in jail and $10,000 fine

"When he returns to the area, he will be arrested if he doesn't turn himself in first," Detroit Police sergeant and head of the city’s graffiti task force Rebeca McKay told the Detroit Free Press. 

Fairey had been in Detroit last month after he was commissioned to construct his largest mural to date by Cleveland Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert’s Real Estate Services. The completed mural is 184-feet-by-60-feet and covers the face of One Campus Martius.

Fairey was in Detroit for a nine-day residency in collaboration with the Library Street Collective, during which he completed multiple projects and installations across the city. Among them: a black and white skull mural called “Pattern of Destruction” in an alley in the Z Parking Garage called “the Beltway," several small panels also along the beltway, and a 14-foot water tower. 

Shortly after completing his residency, police began investigating a series of black-and-white Andre the Giant panels attributed to Fairey that had appeared on nine locations, including two city buildings, in downtown Detroit.  

The total damage, according to police: $9,105.54 

At the time, Fairey’s collaboration with Bedrock and other corporations in Detroit was seen as odd, a criticism which he addressed prior to his residency. 

"I don't think it's hypocritical for me, because I've always espoused what I call the inside-outside strategy," Fairey told the Detroit Free Press. "I still do stuff on the street without permission. I'll be doing stuff on the street when I'm in Detroit. But the idea of being able to infiltrate the system on its own terms and make things better from within is something I've always believed in." 

As one could guess from Fairey’s history and his not-so-cryptic statement, he was planning on doing unsanctioned (some might call “illegal") work in addition to his commissioned pieces. 

It appears that Detroit officials have no leniency for Fairey. Police chief James Craig told media during a news conference during the initial investigation that police “treat everyone the same.”

Mayor Mike Duggan expressed similar sentiments. 

"As I've said to the chief, I expect this to be investigated vigorously. I think Prosecutor (Kym) Worthy has brought seven different felony charges in the last six months against graffiti artists. … Graffiti is being dramatically reduced,” Duggan said during a press conference in early June. 

Fairey may have picked the wrong city to tag. Duggan declared a war on graffiti last fall and has been quoted in the past as saying, "I hate graffiti," according to Daily Detroit.

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Buenos Aires is fighting vandalism with street art

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Buenos Aires has become one of the world's centers of street art with thousands of murals decorating houses, schools and even churches

Buenos Aires (AFP) - Around the corner from a bland grey street in the working class Tres de Febrero suburb of Buenos Aires, a blue boat starts to take form on a wall.

Street artist Andres Rotundo Fraga, wearing a green overall and armed with a brush and some acrylic paint, has started a three-day project aimed at reviving an apartment wall damaged by indecipherable graffiti.  

"The walls were damaged by vandals, by rude people," says 80-year old Edith Campelo, who lives in the building. 

"We have no money to paint so the municipality kindly sent us this great artist so we can embellish the wall." 

Though graffiti is illegal in Buenos Aires, it is typically allowed if the building owners give their permission. 

Sometimes, the government or local authorities fund the murals themselves as a decorated wall tends to remain in better condition than a plain one. 

"It is in poor or middle-class neighborhoods that people take care of a mural as one of their own," says Diego Silva, coordinator of the ART3 public project that funds graffiti work in the Tres de Febrero municipality.

"Four or five year-old murals can be damaged by the weather and the deterioration of the wall, but never because they've been vandalized. The murals are fully respected," he adds, as he stands in one of the most impoverished areas of the municipality, in front of an impeccable mural of a red lighthouse.

ART3 and other government or non-government projects in the city want to fight vandalism with street art, thereby making residents more mindful of their surroundings and improving their quality of life.

"They're not just drawings. From the time we first started we always said it was something for people to participate in," says Silva of the district's 400 murals.

street art Buenos Aires

Capital of street art

In Europe, despite some artists gaining international fame like Banksy, graffiti continues to be largely stigmatized and synonymous with vandalism.

But in Buenos Aires the opposite is true. The Argentine capital has become one of the world's centers of street art with thousands of murals decorating houses, schools and even churches. 

Muralists receive entire blocks or 25-meter-high facades to express themselves using oil or acrylic paint and aerosol spray.

Festivals celebrate their work and some urban artists like Martin Ron or Fio Silva have been asked to paint abroad.

"The murals are here to surprise, to add pleasure, art, culture and joy to the public space," says Patricio di Stefano, the sub-secretary of public space for the city of Buenos Aires, which spends more than 60,000 dollars a year commissioning graffiti.  

Graffiti tour companies have also started to appear, showing tourists the city's great outdoor museum. 

Some murals feature local idols, like football star Carlos Tevez, whose face is famously painted across a building in Fuerte Apache, his poor Buenos Aires neighborhood.

Other murals portray centaurs, giant eyes and various multicolored fictional creations coming straight out of the artists' imagination.

For tour company Graffitimundo member Cecilia Quiles, Buenos Aires' vibrant urban art scene is partly a reaction to Argentina's 1976 to 1983 military dictatorship.

"Buenos Aires is a city that has been scarred", says Quiles about those years "when public monuments were actively cleaned up and graffiti strongly repressed." 

Today, street art has given a new lease of life to Buenos Aires' walls, providing a new form of freedom of expression and improving the quality of life of some of its 10 million residents.

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Banksy is back — this time with a deranged theme park mocking Disneyland

‘Homeland’ paid artists to graffiti the set but didn’t notice they were actually criticizing the show

Meet Hanksy, the viral graffiti artist turning heads with his paintings of Donald Trump and Miley Cyrus

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"I always wanted to be a Disney cartoonist," Hanksy, the 30-something anonymous street artist, tells us.

It's ironic, then, that he has made his name by turning cultural icons into bitingly funny (and often crude) memes, bringing out the darker side of the images we devour every day. In New York City, for example, he recently painted an image of the iPhone's poop emoji emblazoned with Donald Trump's face. He called it "Dump Trump".

Hanksy, who hails from the Midwest but has lived and worked in Manhattan's Lower East Side and Chinatown for the last five years, is an enigma. Or at least, as he openly admits, being enigmatic is his "shtick." Uncannily adept at distilling pop culture conversations into digestible visual puns, he's made some of the most iconic street art works in the last five years. And it all started out as, more or less, a joke. 

Let's take a look at some of his work.

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"I've always been fan of low-brow humor, wordplay, and the easy chuckle — the easy lol, that's what I like," he said. Here, the Simpsons character Mr. Burns makes for a basic pun.

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"Whatever makes me laugh, that's what I want to do," he said. "If it didn't make me roll my eyes in disgust/laughter, I wouldn't do it."



The name "Hanksy" itself is a mash-up, just like his first piece of street art. It's a riff on the work of infamous artist Banksy, known for his politically incisive work and complete anonymity.

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The story goes that back in 2011, soon after moving to New York City, Hanksy was working on a freelance writing assignment when the pun came to mind. He thought an image of Hanks' face in the Banksy style might be even wittier. No matter that he hadn't taken an art class since high school, or done any real street art before.

"I'm not a trained artist," Hanksy said.

Someone snapped a photo of it and sent it to a popular street art blog, and the rest, as they say, is history.



A former digital marketer, one of his main gimmicks is putting famous faces on other things — sometimes animals, sometimes inanimate objects.

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