Frankston's Street Art Festival is Back!

Graffiti/mural artist JEKS, a pioneering member of Greensboro’s burgeoning street-art scene, has made a name for himself globally with his hyper realistic monochromatic and full color portraits. His portraits of artists and Pop culture icons have become beloved landmarks in the cities where they are installed.The amount of meticulous detail, smooth gradients, and emotion in his pieces set him apart from other artists in the realism field. Between painting his jaw-dropping portraits, technical graffiti burners and showing a relentless hunger to push the envelope, he is on his way to become a well known and sought after name in the public art world.

Yvette Vexta is a self-taught artist from Sydney, Australia based in New York. She is recognized as one of the leading female artists in the street and contemporary urban art scene, as well as being one of the first women street artists in what was once a very male-dominated field. Exploring the personal within universal mythopoetic archetypes, her work often enmeshes figurative forms amid her symbolic, geometric shapes with floral, fungi and coral patterns on the macro and micro level. Drawing on her studies into mythology, psychology, science & consciousness, she creates art seen through her unique psychedelic lens, whilst keeping her feet firmly rooted in a deep ecology & feminine perspective. In recent years her practice has expanded from murals and paintings to include augmented reality, digital art, sculpture, soundscapes, and immersive events. She collaborates with a diverse range of clients such as Converse, Lollapalooza & Governors Ball Music Festival, Art With Me Festival, Fabergé, Urban Decay, Sportsgirl, Free People, Juxtapoz Magazine & Samsung.

Born in 1972, Marcus Debie aka GOMAD is a graffiti artist and muralist from the Netherlands. Like many of his peers, he was heavily influenced by the iconic film ‘Beat Street’ as well as ‘Style Wars’ and started painting in the early 80’s. He got artistically active in the Southern Dutch graffiti scene and he is considered as one of the pioneers of the graffiti movement in this region. Since then, his artworks and murals can be found in The Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, France, Switzerland, England, 2018 Ireland, Italy, Croatia, Albania, Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Sweden, Spain, USA and Australia.

Peruvian artist resident in Melbourne, started painting murals in 2009 in Lima, her hometown.

At the present, you can see her colourful work around Barcelona, where she used to live for 11 years.

Now living in the southern suburb of st kilda, Bronik creates playful characters in an enviroment of nature and in harmony with animals.

Always remembering her roots, is leaving a bit of herself in each place where she goes.

Being part of meny festivals gave her the opportunity to visit cities like Medellin, Bristol, Venice, Lisboa, Bali, London, Milan, Tiflis, Nicosia, Cuzco and many other places have some details of this artist.

Bathurst-based artist, Calum Hotham, is known for his big canvases and realistic style is painting a stunning mural on the corner of Nelson and Boscawen Street on the old Electrodry building. Representing the evolution of identity, his artwork is based on a series of photographs by Novocastrian photographers Melanie Muddle and Hannah Robinson from @andthen.photoagency

“I was born in 1996 in Bathurst. I moved to Sydney as a semi-professional cricketer, but then art became my true calling. I’ve just come from painting a wall in Frankston Victoria for Big Picture Fest, and now it’s a privilege to work with Melanie, Hannah, Kat to help represent the upcoming Wallsend community through images of the students. I hope I do it justice.”

Her artwork is often found hidden in forgotten pockets of Melbourne. Meet Tinky, the artist behind our cricket-inspired cover creation.

If you’ve ever been wandering along a Melbourne laneway and spied a miniscule scene – tiny figures in a miniature fantastical world – you may have come across the work of artist Liz Sonntag, aka Tinky.

Tinky gathers vintage objects and assembles them with figurines and word play to create humorous dioramas. “Each artwork embraces a calamitous story of human drama and playful folly,” she says.

Faced with a world of mismatched proportions and unexpected scenarios, each miniature character comes to life through their dream-like determination to make the best of their odd situation, aided and abetted Tiny Lives by a darkly humorous caption.

Kitt Bennett is a Melbourne graffiti artist / street artist fine artist / muralist with comic book styling stream of conscious painting; drawing freeform scenarios and charos, painting crazy drone-view-only roller graffiti skatepark floors and large scale multi level murals.

URSH’s artistic evolution began in Amsterdam, where he transitioned from traditional graffiti to the distinctive post-graffiti style he’s known for today. His art combines classic graffiti elements with new techniques and textures, adding depth and story to the urban landscapes he paints within. Coming from a graphic design background, his work is characterized by precision and a keen eye for design, influenced by styles like Bauhaus and Brutalism. As an international artist revisiting Melbourne, he has already made a positive impact with his earlier murals, resonating with the local art community.

His art goes beyond the visual; it encourages viewers to connect with their emotions and discover personal meanings, rather than simply interpreting the imagery. He aims to create murals that forge lasting emotional connections, giving viewers the opportunity to reflect and engage with the art on a deeper level.

Daniel van de Wiel, also known as Danny Legs, Grafficionado, and P-Know, is a graffiti artist, muralist, designer, and sculptor based in Melbourne with over 25 years of experience. His diverse artistic career includes community projects, private projects, exhibitions, and collaborations with local and international artists. Daniel is the founder of It Stands Out, a creative service specializing in vibrant murals and art projects for communities. With a strong background in murals, street art, and graffiti, Daniel’s work is influenced by his extensive experience in the design, exhibition, and signage industries. His unique skill set and eye for detail result in visually appealing and original artworks.

Demsky started his creative journey getting immersed in the graffiti boom in the early 90s. Since then he has been travelling and spraying throughout more than 50 countries and still feels obsessed with twisting the morphology of his name in multiple, unconventional shapes.

Being a self-taught, his artistic influences are rooted in the graffiti movement, the fluor era and his current nostalgia around the late 80s and early 90s, although nowadays these are expanding also towards obtaining a balanced mix between future and nostalgia, radical creativity and exact sciences.

As a kid he used to spend his time playing arcade games and watching Japanese mecha and sci-fi movies in VHS mode.

Now Demsky feels eager to expand his artistic output and develop new concepts in his studio work – a new approach to develop a more conceptual side where he tries to bring new artforms around the interconnected relationship of space and time array with a strong focus on finding the glitch and animating static compositions.

More precisely, it is a glance to the future from those nostalgic times, an ongoing personal therapy exercise based on getting immersed in creating impossible shapes gravitating in multiple dimensions in a organized chaos environment.

Understanding art as a vehicle to stimulate senses and heal the soul, Demsky has collaborated with worldwide galleries and multiple cultural and commercial projects.

He currently spend most of his time shut away in his laboratory breaking the artificial atmosphere.

Fraz the Wizard is an Adelaide-based artist. Since 2011, he has delved into the worlds of film and parkour and he finds overlap between parkour and street art. His artistic inspiration strikes a balance between a messy grunge aesthetic and the meticulous craftsmanship seen in the films of Kubrick and Tarkovsky. BPF will screen his film Evolution on the Friday night launch.

“The film Evolution is an abstract piece about how everything is connected. It came out of a conversation I had with BPF Creative Director Joel Van Moore about energy, dreams, particles. I believe there is a connection between street art, parkour, ourselves and the future and you can experience this first hand at our festival launch on the Friday opening night.”