It all started when the Penang municipal council commissioned London-trained Lithuanian artist, Ernest Zacherevic, to lead the street art project entitled “Mirror George Town’ in conjunction with the George Town Festival 2012.
The project aimed to transform the streets of George Town, UNESCO World Heritage City, into an open-air art gallery that can be admired as visitors explore the heritage enclave. These murals such as “Little Girl in Blue”, “Little Boy with Pet Dinosaur’, “The Awaiting Trishaw
Peddler” and “Children in Boat” not only brought new lease of life to many of the precolonial shophouses around the inner city, but they’ve also successfully transmitted art into the public sphere. It provides unique platform for communication of ideas, culture and art outside the traditional gallery and museum.
Regardless of how the public sees the art, for Zacherevic, the murals reflect his own experiences. “Thecity is very inspiring. It had huge impact on me and my everyday community there, the experiences, and the architecture it was very natural.” In fact, some
of the people painted in his murals are real
people living in George Town.
Apart from the wall murals, guests to George Town are also attracted by the city’s welded iron wall caricatures. Totalling more than 50, the caricatures are often witty; blending history with humour and depict the lifestyle of the early immigrants of George Town in the 20th century. The concept was inspired by the voices of Penangites who could relate well to the pied how the streets got their funny nicknames to the daily scenes of the community back then.
One cannot help but to laugh at the images of labourers skilfully carrying wares on their heads, cow running helter-skelter from the slaughterhouse or rich man
hiding himself outside the window to avoid being caught
Other caricatures include the Tok Tok Mee seller at Street; the Ah Quee sculpture in honour of Kapitan Chung Keng Kwee, one of the wealthiest men in 19th century George Town; and the caricature of Sir Francis Light with local guy depicting the evolution of Chulia Street, from main street largely for South Indian community in the past to backpacker haven Jimmy Choo, is also honoured at Leith Street.
Source: MUHIBAH, the Royal Brunei Airlines in-flight magazine, 2014 Sep-Oct, pages 41-45. Text recovered from the scanned page by OCR and lightly corrected; spelling may differ from the printed edition.
