What is a Shipping Container?
5 Eye-catching Shipping Container Street Art Projects
Second hand shipping containers have a wide variety of uses that don’t always involve storage, transportation and housing. The portable nature of shipping containers, their durability and the fact that they are low cost make them perfect as a space for street art.
Many well-known graffiti and contemporary artists around the world have discovered the versatility of shipping containers as a blank canvas. Cool, creative art on the side of shipping containers is now found in art festivals, permanent art installations and pop-up shops. Here are a few of our favourite creations.
Graffiti artists that utilise second hand shipping containers
1. Pichi & Avo, North West Walls Street Art Festival, Werchter, Belgium
Source: Junk Culture
In 2014, the North West Walls Street Art Festival held in the town of Werchter, Belgium gave Spanish graffiti duo Pichi & Avo a chance to showcase their incredible artistic skills. An assortment of seven 40ft shipping containers were stacked sky high by the festival’s organisers and the pair painted classic Greek gods posing in somber grey tones over a vibrant modern background. The Greek mythology inspired artwork can be viewed from a 360 degree angle.
We love the contrast of ancient and modern in this work. To see more of their stunning graffiti art, visit Pichi & Avo for a browse.
2. ROA, North West Walls Street Art Festival, Werchter, Belgium
Source: Supertouch Art
Another of the graffiti artists to be invited to the North West Walls Street Art Festival was local Belgian muralist, ROA (ROA is his pseudonym). Well-known for his massive, realistic murals of animals, here ROA has created a black and white study of a giraffe, bear, goat and other animals on the side of several stacked 40ft shipping containers. ROA’s artwork depicts the containers to be cages with the animals held in captivity by chains.
A die hard environmentalist ROA has been commissioned on several occasions to paint large animal murals on the side of buildings including a 3.5 metre rabbit in Hackney, a two storey high fox in Bristol, a tuatara mural in Dunedin and a 25 metre Numbat in Perth.
3. Sofia Minson, 40ft Shipping Container Queens Wharf, Auckland
Source: New Zealand Artwork
At the beginning of 2014 contemporary New Zealand artist Sofia Minson was commissioned to paint the portrait of kiwi musician Tiki Taane on a 40ft shipping container. This was prominently positioned on Queens Wharf in downtown Auckland.
It took Sofia six days to complete the gigantic portrait using just house paints and brushes. Labelled an ‘Art Box’, the artwork on the shipping container is recycled every six weeks with the previous work rolled over with white paint creating a brand new canvas for the next artist.
Of painting on a shipping container Sofia says:
“I enjoyed the new challenge of using acrylics on the vertically corrugated container surface and had to adopt new vertical dry brushing and wet dripping techniques.”
4. Swampy, pop-up zine gallery TAMIZDAT, St Petersburg
Source: Family Business Blog
Mysterious graffiti artist Swampy who hails from Atlanta, was commissioned to paint these black and white drawings on the outside of this pop-up zine gallery in St Petersburg in 2013. The gallery was called TAMIZAT and housed in a second hand shipping container which was decorated inside and out to make it part of the exhibition space.
Swampy likes to remain anonymous so not much about him is known apart from the fact he uses a horned skull as his calling card and has a cult following. So we don’t know how he felt about painting on the side of a shipping container.
5. Street Art, New York
Source: SeeYouSoon.ca
New York has always been the place for cutting edge art, so its not surprising to find shipping containers being utilised for artworks here. This street art scene comes from the trendy Lower East Side.
The 20ft shipping container, which had been left behind after some previous construction work, was commandeered by a local arts group who decided to prettify it. We think it’s a vast improvement.
Are you looking for a unique canvas for your next art project?
From New York to St. Petersburg, when it comes to amazing street art second hand shipping containers certainly get around. But if you’re looking for 20ft or 40ft shipping containers to use for your next art project you don’t need to ring Russia. Contact our team of shipping container experts at Gateway Container Sales & Hire now to discuss how your organisation can utilise a second hand shipping container for your next street art festival, art installation or pop-up shop, in fact almost any kind of creative use you can imagine.
Related Topics
