This was published 7 years ago
Manila street art bicycle tour: Mural attraction
By Keith Austin
Frankly, graffiti is just too prosaic a word for it. We have stopped our bicycles at Federacion Drive, near the corner of 26th Street and 7th Avenue in Metro Manila's burgeoning Bonifacio Global City (BGC) district, to look at an enormous spaceman.
Painted horizontally on the side of the Icon Plaza building, the beautifully realised, somewhat '60s-style astronaut is bisected by a series of pale-blue vertical lines that seem to lift him (or her) off the "canvas".
Called Between the Lines, it's the work of Californian duo David Leavitt and David Torres who, using hydraulic lifts and a truckload of spray paint, created it for the first ArtBGC NextAct ONE Festival in May 2015.
ArtBGC Festival Philippines
Only in its second year now, the week-long street art mural festival has not only attracted many local and overseas street artists but also given the otherwise slightly antiseptic commercial district a new lease of artistic life away from the Rolls-Royce, Lamborghini and Harley-Davidson showrooms and swish new condominium blocks.
Set up by the Bonifacio Arts Foundation, the ArtBGC Festival has catapulted the Philippines into one of the places to see big-scale public art – and we're checking out the best of them on a specially created graffiti cycling tour using bamboo bicycles from the Bambike company, which also runs tours of the old walled intramuros area.
The bike frames are handmade from bamboo, abaca leaf fibre and aircraft-grade alloys by villagers from Gawad Kalinga, a Philippine poverty alleviation project. Bambike describes itself as a "socio-ecological enterprise based in the Philippines that hand makes bamboo bicycles with fair-trade labour and sustainable building practices". They make, they say, "the greenest bikes on the planet".
The tour itself is a morning's cycle around some of the major artworks left behind from the two festivals so far and includes a guide who explains the story behind both the murals and the artists.
After meeting our Bambike guide at the hotel, we jump on the bikes and head over to Bonifacio High Street where the face of Manila artist Anjo Bolardo's brightly coloured mural Pangako looks imperiously down on passers-by, its red-and-white sticker motif interrupted by the Exit sign for the building on which it's painted.
Face the other way and, on the opposite wall, is a surreal, Dali-like work – Pilandok by Egg Fiasco, a young local artist whose work can also be seen at the entrance to the breakfast room in the new Shangri-La at the Fort hotel. Fiasco began his career illegally tagging buildings – a pastime that another artist explained could get you shot in this authoritarian city.
There are also works by other local artists such as Jood Clarino and Dee Jae Pa'este but also from international artists such as Cyrcle and renowned Japanese artist DOPPEL.
Our next stop is the empty car park of the BGC Corporate Centre, where artist Francisco Diaz's massive pastel-coloured floral work, Calamansi and Sampaguita, is painted on to a black background that echoes the office building behind it.
The ambitious painting is a favourite among locals and depicts two flowers which have important symbolism for Filipinos. The calamansi, for instance, is a plant used during Filipino funerals as a way to purify the body, while the sampaguita is both the national flower and the flower that children sell on the streets to survive.
Other favourites for me include the bright, joyful splash of Wallflowers by the artist Trip63, which we find on the wall of a small car park in Bonifacio High Street B-2 (at the back of Krispy Kreme), and a series of smaller works by Los Angeles artist Nate Frizzell just around the corner next to Timezone. His series of realistic renderings of children who have supposedly just spray-painted their own pictures is excellent – especially the little boy with the tiger and the girl, Charlotte, with her simple flower pictures. They've turned out to be among the most photographed of the ArtBGC pieces.
Another massive mural is Wonderland, at the busy intersection of One Global Place (26th Street corner 5th Ave). Created by FAILE, a Brooklyn-based collaboration between artists Patrick McNeil and Patrick Miller, it's almost a sketch compared with some of the other works but no less impressive in its simple, 1950s advertising style.
My favourite remains Between the Lines, even if just for sheer scale because I have no idea what it means, but we finish the tour just around the corner from our hotel (most places are just around the corner in the compact streets of BGC) at Manpower by Filipino artist Kris Abrigo.
Our guide tells us that the three giant, segmented workmen on the side of the Net One Centre are a tribute to the nation's labour force and the many different types of workers who contribute to the building of the Philippines.
Cycling the BGC, by the way, is safe and easy and the Bambikes are, well, bikes. The streets are flat, wide and nobody bats an eye if you mount the pavement for a while. There are dedicated bike lanes on Sundays.
There were nine murals featured in the first year of the festival and these were joined by 11 more in 2016. If you want to go it alone, all 20 can be found on a festival map, available at artbgc.com
Philippine Airlines flies direct to Ninoy Aquino International Airport, Manila, from Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. For bookings and prices see philippineairlines.com
STAYING THERE
Shangri-La at the Fort (30th Street corner 5th Avenue, Bonifacio Global City, Taguig, Manila) has rooms starting from around A$310 a night, twin share. See shangri-la.com/fort
SEE + DO
Bambike ArtBGC tours cost 1200 Philippine pesos ($32) a person and can be booked through bambike.com or call +63.917.598.2000 or +63(2)525.8289.
While the BGC is generally safe, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade advises travellers to "exercise a high degree of caution in the Philippines due to the high threat of a terrorist attack and high level of crime". For more details see smartraveller.gov.au
Keith Austin was a guest of Shangri-La at the Fort, Manila, and Bambike.
Sign up for the Traveller Deals newsletter
Get exclusive travel deals delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up now.