Best of Dulwich Street Art Festival

Stand down neighbourhood watch, this vivid piece of street art is not the handiwork of a workshy vandal. This is Irish artist Conor Harrington’s offering for Baroque the Streets – Dulwich Street Art Festival 2013.

As collaboration between Street Art London and Ingrid Beazley of Dulwich Picture Gallery, a group of international street artists including Harrington, Phlegm and Thierry Noir, were invited to reinterpret Dulwich Picture Gallery’s Baroque works as murals for the 20th anniversary of the Dulwich festival. The resulting mashup of classical and street art is traffic-stoppingly brilliant.

This piece is the latest of Harrington’s to use colonial and military imagery, a subject he’s entertained for the last five years, using Ruben’s Massacre of the Innocents as a source of inspiration. “As you can see from the image, it is a very dark and violent depiction," says Harrington. "My interpretation, filtered through the lens of George Bellows, is a portrayal of global powers turning on themselves (the massacre of the not-so innocent).”

Be sure to pay Harrington’s Dulwich artwork a visit, as it’s set to stay as part of a permanent gallery.

(Image in copy: @DanielNothing; lead image: Street Art London)