Urban art movement beautifies Ballito

It all started with a humble milkshake at the Milk Café with three crazy creatives throwing ideas around. A week later a new art movement was born.

A fresh out the box urban art movement, Urbanloveza, is opening up opportunities for creatives to express themselves publicly through street art with the concrete jungle as their canvas.

Urbanloveza is a street art initiative that burst on to the scene only a few short weeks ago with their environmentally friendly reverse graffiti at the Mr Price Pro Ballito.

“We want to be a catalyst. There are no spaces for creatives to express themselves. We want to create good art and inspire and boost art. We want other artists to get off their butts and start doing something.”

This movement is the brainchild of commercial photographer and graphic designer Warrick Shannon of Durban, travel blogger, social media guru and freelance online journalist Tamryn Lambson and illustrator Dustin Scott both of Ballito.

“We all chip in and bring our individual skills to the table. We feed off each other's energy,” said Lambson.

With each of them having full time jobs, Urbanloveza is an outlet for them to scratch the creative itch and nurture their creative soul, as Shannon explained it.

“It is an awesome idea. We do not have to answer to anyone and can just do our own thing at the drop of a hat,” said Shannon.

Reverse or green graffiti is a method of creating temporary or semi-permanent images on walls or other surfaces by removing dirt from a surface and cleaning with the use of stencils.

“It takes blood, sweat, tears, elbow grease and wire brushes – we like it dirty,” said Shannon and Scott.

“We do not change anything, it is not permanent and it is 100 percent legal. We are actually providing a public service,” said Lambson.

It is all about beautifying urban spaces.

“This type of art is big overseas but has not really been done here in Durban which is strange considering the amount of creative talent and beautiful urban spaces this province has. This is a perfect way to get people talking,” said Shannon.

Having started out with reverse graffiti the group plan on branching out in many different types of environmentally friendly urban art.

Green advertising will soon become part of Urbanloveza's portfolio where companies pay for an art mural to be created in urban spaces with their name appearing along side it – “powered by …”

Urbanloveza's recent project was their 67 minutes for Mandela Day where they teamed up with Carla Geyser from 1 in a Million organisation to create awareness around rhino poaching as well as each organisation.

They transformed a wall on Ballito Drive, across from the Caltex garage, into a large indebele inspired mural with Mandela's face and two beautiful rhinos taking centre stage.