Post Category → Street Art

Day 1 at Osheaga Music and arts Festival

Osheaga Music and Arts Festival is Canada’s most sophisticated music festival. It takes place around the sweltering last weekend of July each year, and delivers a cool lineup of local, Canadian and international talent. Fodor’s Travel voted Osheaga as one of the top 15 music festivals in the world, and it attracts over 140,000 people annually. Each year, Parc Jean-Drapeau, an expansive park on St. Helene island in Montreal, is transformed into a music and arts haven, for festival goers of all ages. The location of the festival is unique in that it’s provides an outdoor, nature heavy space, but is just one metro stop away from the core of Montreal and all it’s amenities.

Now in it’s 11th year, Osheaga has over 100 acts performing over three long, hot days. This year, local talent included bands like The Damn Truth, The Barr Brothers, Kaytranada and Grimes. The marquee headliners this year were history making, with Radiohead taking the stage on the last night, a conquest that Evenko Nick Farkas had been eyeing since the festival began. Other headliners included singer Lana Del Rey and ’90s rockers, The Red Hot Chili Peppers.

 

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The River and Mountain Stages, where the headliner’s played nightly, was always filled to the brim with people.

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A gaggle of people sit underneath one of the many colourful art installations.

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A hallmark of Parc-Jean Drapeau, and a lookout from the water onto the city centre.

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Art melted seamlessly into nature at Osheaga.

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Lots of interesting lines and textures to be seen at Parc Jean Drapeau.

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The park is very expansive and the concerts are spread out across the park.

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Some installations shone brighter at night.

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Osheaga feels like a grown up Disneyland, like there’s magic in the air.

Poetry in anonymity: Amsterdam street artist Laser 3.14

The public opinion on graffiti has changed significantly in the past two decades. The new wave of street art has socio-economic undertones, strong messages, and striking visuals, allowing public access to appreciate art, far removed from the confines of galleries.

Street artist Laser 3.14 is a social provocateur, providing cultural commentary through his tags on temporary spaces in Amsterdam. He’s a poet, a thinker and a street punk, confining anarchy onto plywood.

His work is simple – often just one or two lines, encouraging provocation, reminding you of truths you thought were escapable. It’s not intended for shock value, there is angst, but it’s not angry.

Instead, the artist offers up his interpretation of the sadness, love, social injustice and moral qualms of which we are made.

Laser 3.14 has become synonymous with Amsterdam. His work, although temporary, is by no means scarce. It pops up frequently, through the different landscapes of the city; between the sex and coffee shops near Centraal, above the heads of the tourists in the Museumplein and most significantly, in the cool streets of Jordaan.

His true identity like most graffiti artists and superheroes, is a mystery. He prefers to work in complete anonymity, adopting the moniker of Johnny Smith on his various social media accounts. We visited him at his studio in Amsterdam and he is just as enigmatic in person.

During our time with him, we discussed the growing popularity of street art, the freedom his anonymity allows him and why graffiti isn’t something just naughty boys do.

 

” Sometimes the mystery gives the art even more potency.”

– Laser 3.14