The Standard article :"Day-Glo artists take to the streets"

Day-Glo artists take to the streets

April 12, 2005

Just three steps from the floor-to-ceiling windows of one of numerous posh art galleries lining the streets of Mid-Levels, is a graffiti portrait of an out-of-place blob of a creature.

It winks and sticks out its tongue with trickster verve, inspiring nothing more than a double take from pedestrians on their way for coffee or to get the morning paper.

But for some anonymous street artist, who knelt before the gray back alley wall it now adorns, that orange Day-Glo representation means something important - artistic self-expression.

According to artists and fans of street art, this kind of design has everything to do with an independence of spirit and a growing arts scene that is questioned even by promoters of the city's cultural enclaves.

That makes Hong Kong like other cities with broader and more visible art histories.(more...)