IPOH WALL ART

After reading about the MH17 Mural done by Ipoh artists, Eric Lai and his students, I went there with Lai Yoong and Aunt Linda last weekened to check it out.  Also I wanted to write a message on it.  The artists left crayons for visitors to do so.  

I was pleasantly surprised that besides the tribute to MH17, there were more new murals done by Eric and Co.  I am sharing the new murals plus some of the previous ones done by them here.

The wall art here has become a tourist attraction in Ipoh.  It was initiated by art teacher, Eric Lai, who runs an art school Artgene Studio in Bercham.  The murals can be found at a back between Jalan Masjid and Jalan Sultan Iskandar (Hugh Low Street).

The initial four murals had a cultural theme.  This was followed by children’s activities such as blowing bubbles, playing hide and seek and boys playing at a waterfall, tradition, life in the old days, tribute to famous personalities such as Einstein, Mandela and Bruce Lee.  The most recent being the tribute to the fallen Malaysian airplane.
From write-ups in the newspaper, I found out that Lai’s interest stems from his youth when his mother used to create images on their house walls. However, the inspiration to create this wall art in Ipoh came from Penang’s Zacharevic wall art murals.  It seems that Lai had wanted to do the wall art for sometime; so when a sponsor offered to fund the materials he was able to do so.  Lai promptly approached the building owners who had no objections and also alerted Ipoh City Council’s Building Department before he started work.

Link: http://www.ipohecho.com.my/v2/2013/03/01/wall-art-comes-to-ipoh/