Hit The Bricks is a three-day street art festival which saw the Newcastle CBD transformed with commanding works of art spread throughout the city. Picture: Peter Lorimer Source: News Corp Australia
THEIR canvases are brick walls and their brushes are spray-cans, but the masters behind a slew of stunning works in Newcastle are artists through and through.
Giant, colourful spray-painted murals have sprung up throughout the city as part of the inaugural Hit The Bricks festival, designed to showcase street art and transform unsightly swathes of brick and concrete.
Hit The Bricks is a three-day street art festival which saw the Newcastle CBD transformed with commanding works of art spread throughout the city. Picture: Peter Lorimer Source: News Corp Australia
Organisers say it reflects a growing acceptance of the kind of unconventional public art that has helped make Melbourne a cultural destination and has more recently caught on in Sydney, Wollongong and other parts of NSW.
Melbourne-based artist "Adnate" (most only disclose their street art pseudonyms) was one of many to converge on Newcastle over the weekend, spending two days spraying a striking portrait of an Aboriginal child on the side of a building overlooking the harbour.
Tim Phibs, who collaborated with renowned street artist "Beastman" to create an abstract mural featuring fish and a bird, has honed his craft over more than two decades.
Hit The Bricks is a three-day street art festival which saw the Newcastle CBD transformed with commanding works of art spread throughout the city. Picture: Peter Lorimer Source: News Corp Australia
"Towns are starting to see the value of work like this," he said.
"Times are changing and this is being seen more and more as true art. We definitely consider ourselves artists."
A team from Melbourne and Newcastle helped adorn the side wall of Mal Hebblewhite's backstreet terrace house with an 8m-tall rosella as part of the festival - a creation that Mr Hebblewhite said lifted the feeling of the entire area.
"There is a lot of opportunities to beautify the city by increasing the amount of public art out there," he said.
Hit The Bricks is a three-day street art festival which saw the Newcastle CBD transformed with commanding works of art spread throughout the city. Picture: Peter Lorimer Source: News Corp Australia
"This is one way of making it a more livable city."
Festival organiser Sally Bourke said the murals took art to the masses.
"It takes art out of galleries and puts it into everyday life," she said.
Plans are already under way to expand the festival next year.
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