Artist and tattoist Cinzah painting his mural on the Hamilton City Council building today. Photo / Malisha Kumar
Artist and tattoist Cinzah painting his mural on the Hamilton City Council building today. Photo / Malisha Kumar
Hamilton East and the CBD are in for a big splash of colour this week as the Boon Street Art Festival makes its return to the city for the eighth time.
From November 3 to 5, a crew of seven artists, including New Zealand artists Jesse Mosen, Cinzah, Gary Venn, Kell Sunshine, Haser, and Alice Alva, as well as Japanese artist Koryu, will paint five murals in Hamilton East and two in the central city.
For the first time, Boon will have an Art Hunt competition where families are invited to visit all seven murals, pick up a map from any site, collect stamps, and leave the entry at Hayes Common where a winner will be drawn.
Boon Arts chairman Iain White said the team was “absolutely stoked” to bring more street art to the city.
“We love how our murals make art an everyday experience,” he said.
The new artworks will draw down the laneways of local businesses including Jingles Hairdressers, Hayes Common and Lovegrove Lane.
The Edo Japanese restaurant and the Hamilton City Council building on Caro St will also be brightened up with new street art.
Napier-based multidisciplinary artist and tattooist Cinzah has kicked off the festival early: He started work on his mural at the council building on Monday and will be finished before the official festival start on Friday.
The Waikato Herald went along to see the mural on Wednesday when Cinzah was still very busy but making immense progress.
A bystander from a nearby business said: “We’ve been watching him paint [the mural] from the office since he started. It’s absolutely amazing.”
Among the artists set to pick up their brushes and spray cans later this week is Kell Sunshine who will be working alongside Haser, Koryu and Gary Venn on Grey St.
Kell is a muralist, lettering artist and illustrator from Tairāwhiti Gisborne whose art is often inspired by environmental elements and relationships between “Mama Earth’s inhabitants”.
Kairau ‘Haser’ Bradley is a Māori artist of Ngā Puhi descent, born and raised in the western suburbs of Auckland. His work explores the limits and boundaries of the alphabet in the context of graffiti.
Koryu is a Japanese artist based in Dunedin. He was already part of the street art festival last year, where he created the mural of the tiger next to the ArtsPost Gallery by the Waikato Museum.
Cambridge artist and illustrator Gary Venn likes to take things back to the basics when doing work outside of the commercial illustration scene, using simple line drawings.
Dunedin-based artist Koryu was part of the Boon Street Art Festival last year, where he painted the mural pictured next to the ArtsPost Gallery near the Waikato Museum. Photo / Danielle Zollickhofer
Meanwhile, Hamilton artist Alice Alva will give some love to a wall on Jellicoe Drive. Alva’s work explores the emotional connections that we develop with textile objects, particularly in relation to memory, love, and loss.
Jesse Mose, also known as Limitbreak, is an artist and tattooist from Cambridge. They will be working on a mural in the CBD on Victoria St.
The annual Boon Street Art Festival is the brainchild of Hamiltonians Paul Bradley and Charlotte Issac who share a passion for art and the city.
