Whether in Buenos Aires, Bogota, Baton Rouge, or his hometown, Brisbane, Fintan Magee’s massive murals have been popping up on abandoned walls all over the world. The Aussie street artist finds space that is often hidden or vacated, otherwise unnoticeable — walls that are slowly wearing away, cluttered with broken-down furniture and abandoned plywood — and transforms them into giant narrative murals.
Fleshy figures fill his walls and defy the space’s physical limitations: the wall’s size, its two-dimensionality. His characters, giant people or animals, carve out their own distinct place within the wall. They sit deep inside the composition.
Working with themes like overconsumption, resource depletion and urban transition, Magee aims to call attention to these forsaken street corners. He values the realness of his figures, but embraces surrealist imagery and the physicality of the paint itself. A migrant woman in Buenos Aires wades through a puddle of blue that ripples onto the sidewalk below. In Bogota, a man in a black mask leaps to grab at a flock of white birds, who fly just below the wall’s barbed wire. His ink-black jeans bleed paint onto the cracked surface.
Traversing the world seemingly every few weeks, Magee is making a name for himself abroad, but has also made a splash at home. Earlier this year, Magee participated in “First Coat,” the first street art festival in Toowoomba, Australia. With its growing street art scene, Queensland will certainly be a region to watch with Magee as one of its biggest players.
Brisbane
Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires
Collaboration with Seth Globepainter in Baton Rouge
London
Sydney
Woolongong
