The History of Commercial Street Art
More than a mural
Painted wall advertisements trace back to the 1830s with huge outdoor billboards showcasing anything and everything. The golden age of HPA hit between 1920 - 1940 where they were everywhere. As a rather inexpensive form of advertising, any surface was up for grabs to advertise the latest and greatest. By the 1950s, the rise of electric signs had begun and a decade later, large printing of vinyl ads was the go-to form of OOH. To this day, you can still see the haunting signs of faded adverts peeping out, hidden among the city walls.
The craft
Hand painted murals are rooted in their craft. The process of painting the ad is transformative in itself for the advert – it changes the role of the passerby and viewer to become part of something much larger. They connect with the process, watching the advert come together like pieces of a puzzle. Then, one day they look up and Voila! There it is, in all its glory. A piece of art that transforms spaces of greyness into a small reprieve in someone's day – murals have the ability to reshape people's mindsets and moods.
The community
Murals are a labour of love. The very process itself is enough to stop people in their tracks to watch such a spectacle unfold. Your audience immediately becomes an interactive puzzle piece within the overarching storyline of your advert – they’re emotionally invested in the completion of this artwork.
WHY “WALL LORDS”?
The first artists to paint billboards or branding - where painters. But being a cut above the rest, these painters branded themselves ‘WALL DOGS’ as they suspended themselves high above the street lights to install large scale artworks — with very technology in the 1920’s, they risked it all to hang with their mates, smoke a few darts, eat some sangas and live the artists dream of 'making a fulltime wage from street art’.
We pay homage to the ‘wall dogs’ before us by branding ourselves alike. We’ve spent 20+ years (non-collectively) installing public art, illegally or legally. We’ve spent more than 10,000 hours perfecting our skills. Whether it be art directing, project installing/ project management, sales & marketing, artist mentoring or straight up ‘face-to-wall’ labour-intenstive painting to accumulate calloused hands, bad knees, obsessiveness over systems/procedures and replicating designs to perfection. We are WALL LORDS.
To quote the immortal ‘Lil Jon’..
”FROM THE WINDOWS, TO THE WALLS” — We’ve got it covered from concept to delivery; every step of the way. We’ve got it covered more than anybody else in the industry and our growing track record speaks for itself.
