Murals shine bright in city
Where most see a drab concrete wall, Joel Hart sees a multi-storey canvas.
The street artist is on a mission to paint the town red – or pale pink, as it may be – and has masterminded a galley of pop artinspired designs, which he has sprayed, stencilled and painted on blank Christchurch walls.
Hart is one of a collection of artists turning the city into a centre for street art.
Outside Welles St’s Supreme Supreme coffee shop, on the back wall of shop Peaches & Cream, is Hart’s most recent creation. Glowin-the-dark skulls pop on a bubblegum pink backdrop, a woman looks out across the fastbecoming coolest street in the city, the word ‘‘wicked’’ emblazoned on her forehead.
‘‘Fade into darkness’’ is plastered across the top, but Hart’s work is anything but dark.
The Christchurch man, responsible for many a bold and bright mural, said most works did not have a specific meaning. Juxtaposition of light and dark, love and death, and past and present was often the basis.
Female faces – mystery women crafted with clippings of real people – were usually layered with symbols and text, carefully selected from the words that just ‘‘jumped off the page’’. Hart then digitally pieced them together on a grid and enlarged.
Canterbury’s earthquakes provided fresh platforms and new semi-permanent spaces with exposed walls to colour, Hart said.
His most notable ‘‘contemporary urban pop-art style’’ murals included an aqua blue wall with a woman holding a cracked skull in New Brighton; a mammoth 210-square-metre piece with a 1950s style pin-up woman with outstretched arms and the word ‘saucy’ on her forehead on Southwark St; and a black, white and gold portrait of a man and bear on Madras St.
‘‘I wanted a challenge. You start smaller and sort of of go bigger and just sort of work out ‘how can I take this and go larger?’ You do a big piece and just want to go bigger and bigger.’’
Hart studied graphic design at Natcoll in 2004 and was a graphic designer until he ‘‘got into art on the side’’ and spilled his creativity onto walls and canvasses.
He went out his own two years ago, mixing commissioned works, logo designs and more traditional pieces with the murals.
‘‘I’ve always loved drawing. I used to draw people’s dogs and cars and eventually I got into stencil art. The computer side of things just took my art to another level,’’ he said.
‘‘The hardest bit is to know when it’s finished and step back. You could keep going and going but you’ve got to know when it’s done.’’
A solo exhibition was on the cards for 2018, Hart said, featuring light boxes, metals and perspex. His inspiration? Anything from urban and city environments, buildings, signs and graffiti culture.
'I've always loved drawing. I used to draw people's dogs and cars and eventually I got into stencil art.'
Joel Hart, street artist and graphic designer
1. Which Christchurch restaurant, popular with students, was badly damaged by fire on Sunday?
2. How tall are the arches on the Memorial Gateway bridge on Memorial Ave?
3. Who won the Melbourne Cup on Tuesday?
4. Who was voted Speaker of the House on Tuesday?
5. Which country is US President Donald Trump currently visiting?