Alt. title: On an Enriching Journey of Discovering Arts and Sights Around Georgetown, Penang.
flâneur (french) noun.
1. One who wander aimlessly, who roams, who travel at a lounging pace.
2. An idler, a loafer
In conjunction of Georgetown Festival 2012, the month long (15 June-15 July) celebration of arts, culture and heritage, visual street arts in the form of murals and sculptures has been commissioned and propped up all around the heritage core of Georgetown at both visible sights or tucked away in some unassuming back alley. This certain tickles the fancy of both arts aficionados or casual tourists alikes to located and discover all the arts and sculpture that's available in order to make a full set like a collection of some sort.
With the help of internet, social network and automotive help (Esther), I've assumed the persona of a flâneur (somewhat a misnomer because I do have a purpose while maintaining the theme of strolling and soaking up the ambiance at the centre but nonetheless) and explore the inner urban fabric of Georgetown, Penang.
Mirrors Georgetown, a series of murals by Ernest Zacharevic depicting people of Georgetown in amusing and engaging way.
 |
| (from left to right) Lebuh Armenian, Lebuh Cannon (near Khoo Kongsi), Lebuh Armenia/Lebuh Pantai Junction, Lebuh Ah Quee, Chew Jetty, Lebuh Muntri and the largest and final masterpiece, the resting trishaw man of Upper Penang Road. |
Marking Georgetown, a series of caricatures by various artists and made by steel rods, telling the history of the road and life around Georgetown. Apparently this project started since 2010 but it is still growing until today.
 |
| How many did you manage to found. Here's 21 of them... |
 |
| ...and one special one (five foot lane of Stewart Lane/Lebuh Muntri/Love) Lane which I took using my mobile phone's panorama feature because all of them has to be in the same picture. |
Of course, Georgetown Festival being a celebration of arts, a visit to any of the art exhibitions is a must. Here's a particularly interesting one: RESCUBE by a selected group of modern artists (including Ernest Zacharevic himself) at 212 Beach Street (immediately to the left of the Chulia Street Fire Department junction if you're coming from Chulia Street Ghaut), a abandoned shophouse turned reclaimed bohemian art space.
 |
| One of the more amusing exhibits over RESCUBE is the Orang Utan Window with a mirror attached on its face in which you can try to fit your face onto that mirror. The funeral rites theme as well as traditional chinese medicine advertisment these by a couple of other artists are very interesting as well. Oh and pardon the black bars. I don't feel like squeezing or cropping the picture when I created the collage using photoediting software so I am keeping the dimension. |
Of course being a flaneur seeking escape and gratification of sense, my exploration is not limited around the Georgetown core alone but includes an excursion to Penang Hill on an early Saturday morning on my own while braving the massive influx of weekend tourists with the help of RapidPenang and student price discount. My main purpose (besides escaping lowland heat and enjoying fresher air at 700m above sea level) is to check out the recently completed Penang Hill Hawker Centre, now renamed The Cliffs (because it is perched beside a cliff.)
 |
| Top left: I am glad they replaced the hideous and garish Ministry of Culture and Tourism billboard with a simpler yet way elegant Penang Hill 1923 billboard. Top centre and right: The Cliff, a spanking new wood and steel structure housing the hawker centre (good for them for maintaining reasonable price range for their food), souvenir shop and a novelty Owl Museum which I will not pay RM10 for entrance simply because there's a bigger novelty museum in Kuching and it's bloody free. Lower left and centre: Dining with a view if you can afford to splurge. Lower right: Idyllic existence. |
 |
| Finally a panoramic view of Georgetown and most of Penang Straits stretching from Gurney Drive to Penang Bridge (squint harder), enabled by panorama feature of my mobile phone camera. Not the best quality but still. |
For more and uncollaged pictures, feel free to visit these three albums over my Facebook (probably you have to be my friend to access the album though). I wonder when's or where's the next occasion that I can assume the persona of a flâneur again.
Epilogue: Dammit I had ran out of free storage space for photo over Picasa and my Flickr's storage space is dwindling as well. Finally it has come to a point that I have to host my picture somewhere else hence Imageshack. Meanwhile, the collage I made using PhotoScape always ended up quite huge that even Microsoft Paint can't open for some reason. Kinda missed Picasa Photo Editor now for some reason...or I just haven't play around much with Photoscape. Meanwhile decision time: Bon Odori 盆踊り or not. We'll see. 还是过着糜烂，消耗年华的生活。就是提不起劲儿来。
No comments:
Post a Comment