Murals depicting images of the Birds Of Paradise have been painted by street artists in Cities across the World to support a Greenpeace environmental campaign.  Rainforests are being devastated across Papua in the quest to increase palm oil production, the consequence is loss of wildlife habitat, collapse of biodiversity and displacement of communities.

This campaign has appeared in Tokyo, Geelong, Long Beach, Berlin, Breda, Wellington, Taipei and here in Shoreditch London, below.

This idea is to get up images of the birds, replicating in the cities their colourful plumage, their flight and their life, and thus to promote the conversation about the need for action to halt the eradication of their lands and habitat.

Curiously in London the campaign started with a commissioned piece of artwork but then Greenpeace supporters/activists extended the action with quite a flock of non permissioned paste ups on walls from Brick Lane to Old Street.

The Greenpeace campaign appears to have taken wing as a vibrant Bird Of Paradise in Sell Out’s distinctive expressionist style was spotted on Brick Lane, suggesting that other street artists are independently picking up on the campaign.   There is always room for campaigning political street art, particularly when it comes with a novel legal-illegal combo strategy and picks up momentum in such an unusual way.

This is a slightly abbreviated version of a post by same author which appeared on Graffoto.co.uk which also has a lot more photos of the paste ups put up in London

LINKS:

Greenpeace website  

Matt Sewell website

Sell Out instagram

All photos: Dave Stuart