Turkish Delight in Istanbul….

February 21, 2011 — art, artist, artists, arts, battle, canvas, catherine, chalk, chalking, chalks, children, city, event, liverpool, mcmahon, merseyside, painting, park, pavement, philip, public, screever, sidewalk, street, turkey, turkish, uk, urban, urbancanvas, workshop, İstinye

İstinye Park Shopping Mall, Istanbul 2011, originally uploaded by UrbanCanvas.

Hello my friends; haven’t blogged for a while; all in all it’s been a very busy month with lots of enquiries and bookings coming in left right and centre. It doesn’t look as if the recession is hitting the street art sector, in-fact I have a feeling that we will fare better than most in the cultural industries. Due to the fact that we are highly ‘visual’ you can’t miss us basically and public involvement gives ‘more bangs for your bucks’ whatever the reality it seems unlikely to slow down as 2010 turned out to be our busiest year on record and this year looks like more of the same.

This month (3rd to 7th Feb) has seen us working in Istanbul at one of the city’s premier shopping malls; İstinye Park in the western district. For anybody who doesn’t know, Istanbul is the only city in the world that is straddled between two continents; Europe and Asia, we were working in Europe….technically at least. But it all felt very ‘eastern’ to us. Lots of Mosques and eastern looking food if food can look ‘eastern’ anyhow it turned out to be a very busy gig and possibly one of our toughest since 2007 and the Bahrain Grand Prix.

Just an unrelenting sea of children all wanting to take part and threatening to overwhelm us at times; we estimated around 900 children taking part over the three days, the remarkable thing was that we actually created anything resembling ‘art’ the sheer numbers where against us as well as the obvious language difficulties.

According to the organisers this was the first workshop of its kind ever to seen in Istanbul….and I can well believe it as the children didn’t seem to understand the rules, most of the time children know naturally NOT TO WALK ON THE ART….this rule works most of the time in the UK, but was lost in translation here. The kids just didn’t get it, not to worry though everybody seemed to enjoy themselves and had great fun messing around with paint which was great…..but I do have to admit it was stressful bringing it all together.

This was very much a last minute gig so all the planning was done on the fly with little time to think thing through….this can sometimes work out good and some of our best art has been produced under pressure.

You can see more images here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/urbancanvas/sets/72157625976153047

And 3D images here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/urbancanvas/sets/72157626057002334

Many thanks to Contraband International Ltd for making trhis event possible

All for now….Off to Norwich tomorrow (22nd Feb. 2011) for the
NORWICH DRAGON FESTIVAL!

Be seeing you…….

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© Philip Battle (UrbanCanvas) Liverpool, United Kingdom.