Hanbury Street — ROA's Giant Pelican

Hanbury Street in London features a massive black-and-white crane mural painted freehand in eight hours by Ghent-born street artist ROA. Originally planned as a heron, ROA adapted the artwork after learning that cranes are sacred to the local Bangladeshi community. The street also contains Martin Ron's September 2013 guardsman mural and the former site of Annie Chapman's 1888 murder by Jack the Ripper.

London · from the walk “Walls That Talk: Shoreditch Street Art & Urban Creativity” · Generated

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Hanbury Street, London E1 5JP

Why did ROA change his mural design on Hanbury Street in London from a heron to a crane?

Look up at this wall... and let that sink in. A massive black-and-white bird towers above Hanbury Street, stretching across the entire side of a building. This is the work of Roa, born around nineteen seventy-six, a street artist from Ghent, Belgium, and considered one of the most prolific muralists in the world, with over a Thousand murals to his name.

Now here's the story most people don't know. Roa's original plan was to paint a Heron. But while he was up on the cherry picker, local Bengali residents asked him if it was a crane... because cranes are Sacred to the Bengali community. He changed the bird after learning that the local Bangladeshi population revered the crane in their area of Sylhet back home. Just like that... the piece transformed into something that Belonged here.

And that's actually Roa's signature philosophy. He generally paints wild or urban animals and birds that are native to the area being painted. Rats in New York. Elephants in Bangkok. And a sacred crane... in the heart of London's Bengali quarter.

This was Roa's biggest piece at the time and took just eight hours to complete. He worked from a motorised cherry picker, clutching a sketch in his left hand while wielding a spray can in his right, painting entirely freehand.

Now look to the left. That upside-down figure in a bearskin hat? That's Martin Ron's mural of a Queen's Guardsman, painted in September twenty thirteen. The one-armed handstand is actually a traditional move from Capoeira, a Brazilian martial art. It took him three days to create this image of a Queen's guard taking a timeout to perform Capoeira. An Argentinian artist painting a British soldier performing a Brazilian martial art... on a street in London's Bengali neighbourhood. If that doesn't capture the spirit of Shoreditch, nothing does.

But this street holds far darker layers beneath the paint. At six a.m. on the eighth of September, eighteen eighty-eight, Annie Chapman was found in the backyard of twenty-nine Hanbury Street, where she had been murdered by Jack the Ripper. Number twenty-nine no longer exists... it was demolished, and the Old Truman Brewery was extended to cover the entire block on the north side of Hanbury Street.

From one of Victorian London's most infamous crime scenes... to an open-air gallery of international street art. That is the story of Hanbury Street. Layer upon layer upon layer.

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