Thursday 24 September 2015

Photos: The street art of Valencia

On a sojourn to Valencia this week I was struck by how prolific and inventive the southeastern Spanish city's street art scene is. An already beautiful place with an historic old town with clusters of impressive buildings (a nip up the Torres de Serranos and a  swing by the ceramics museum are musts), the graffiti lifts the experience still further. 

Its university's central location - including a design school which has a shop well stocked with spray cans - doubtless plays a big part. Almost every available spot in the hipster hotspots of the centre's northwest side and its successor Rassafa are taken up with incredible throw-ups, recurring yet interesting tags/stencils and paste-ups. 

Like Madrid, the most startling images are found in both Valencia's tourist-filled heart and tired backstreets. There are loads of recurring themes ("Are you dead yet?" is repeatedly stencilled up) and artists whose work is familiar, probably from the pages of VNA, but I'll let the pictures do the talking. I took loads more, so give me a shout if you'd like to see them.