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    “Rewilding” Nuart Aberdeen Festival 2022

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    Street artists and muralists from across the World once again descended on Aberdeen for the 2023 Nuart Festival. 12 artists created eight new painted murals alongside four street works which primarily featuring paste up and poster art.It marked another successful return to Aberdeen for Nuart who were celebrating their sixth year of working with the city. As in previous years, the combination of permanent and transitionary artworks provided a real art feast for people to seek out and stumble upon.Returning to the Scottish city, Nuart Aberdeen 2023 will feature 13 artists who will paint their imaginative and engaged murals around the city centre and its surrounding areas. The list includes AIDA Wilde, Eloise Gillow, Escif, Jamie Reid, KMG, Manolo Mesa, Murmure, NeSpoon, SNIK, Stanley Donwood, Swoon, Tamara Alves, and Thiago Mazza.“Rewilding”. A topical theme that touches on many issues related to “Trespass and Transgression” which we’ve been researching this past year with friends and colleagues for Nuart Journal, but one which provokes different questions and responses as it sends us down different pathways and tributaries.Rewilding isn’t without its own issues of course – it’s not all meadows full of wildflowers and the freedom to roam. There’s also the question of the local industries and people that have for generations built their lives around the enclosing of “common” land – not unlike those “creative industries” that have grown exponentially around “art” and the “artist”. In taking a “birds eye” view of a future “rewilded” city, where the roots from the art on the streets are entwined around the granite columns of our illustrious art institutions, and the carefully curated and cultivated flowers of the institution are flooding through the double doors and out into the high-street, we attempt to provoke reflections on what a city where art is truly free, might look, sound, smell and feel like. What happens to those industries and “enclosures” when art becomes unshackled from its chains?In a culture of the permissioned and commissioned mural where the tag still runs wild and free, how do we harness the power of one without losing the vitality and exuberance of the other?It’s an interesting picture, and those are exactly what we live for – and what we’ll hopefully be contributing to the local environment come June. We hope you’ll join us in exploring some of these new works and themes.‘To be honest, it will be some time before I’ve processed everything about Nuart 2023,  in a lot of respect, when a Nuart “ends” , it’s very much the beginning for me. So I’ll let it settle, pick up the bills, enjoy the imagery and memories and hopefully come away with a sense of fulfillment. In saying that, I think that anyone involved in previous editions, would attest that there was something quite magical about this year. It really felt like we were a community of like-minded souls, that we caught and channeled something quite ancient and genuine and authentically human. Perhaps it was the rewilding theme, this yearning for something more than what the current system offers and how we’re forced to navigate it in order to put food on the table. I hope we managed to show some alternatives or triggered some thoughts around what this culture genuinely has to offer away from the glitz and the glamour, the novelty and the merch. Over the course of the production, I see deep and genuine friendships emerging, bonds forming that in some cases will last a lifetime. Apart from all the wonderful art, a genuinely interested public, the production and partners and all that goes into a Nuart edition, there are aspects of it that we’ll never know, the friendships and narratives and the seeds of ideas that are planted, new relationships to each other and to the world that are formed, this is the real story and value of what we all collectively create. – Martyn Reed,  the director and curator of Nuart, on the evolution of Nuart Festival.Text from the Nuart Team More

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      “RECONNECT” Nuart Aberdeen Festival 2022

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      As we emerge blinking from the uncertainty and radical disconnection of the past two years of lockdown and social distancing, it is disorienting to rediscover those social connections and relationships to the people, places and spaces of our cities that have been stretched to the limit and in many cases broken and lost. No longer objects of risk, fear and constant surveillance, we hope Nuart’s “reconnect” edition can help to dial down the background anxiety that had become part of our daily lives.  To help us do this, we have connected with artists, academics and industry professionals from across the globe to explore and present the very best that this culture has to offer.Mural by Elisa-CapdevilaNUART ARTISTS This year’s festival plays host to 11 inspiring national and international street artists. Festival artist Martin Whatson reconnects with a new piece having lost his earlier work to developers, whilst Scottish stencil artist James Klinge makes his debut and Spanish artist and activist Jofre Oliveras’ murals promise new connections with the city’s spaces. We also have a rare festival appearance from Spanish artist Pejac, whose trompe-l’œil techniques have enchanted audiences around the world. Portuguese artist Nuno Viegas will bring his clean and minimal work that draws on traditional graffiti for inspiration, while Barcelona-based Slim Safont’s striking murals offer intriguing links to our daily lives.Mural by PEJACPopular Copenhagen-based muralist JACOBA returns to Aberdeen with an aim to creatively disrupt our sense of disconnection and indifference, and we are pleased to welcome London-based artist and activist for trans rights Erin Holly, whose studio and street-based practice are making an international impact. Spanish artist Elisa Capdevila’s large scale murals promise evocative slices of life reconnected, while Moroccan artist Mohamed L’Ghacham will recreate resonant scenes from everyday life writ large. Joining us from Norway, artist Miss.Printed will delight and surprise audiences with her delicate miniature paper collages placed in the streets. On Sunday 12th, the artist will also be running a Street Collage workshop open to the public, alongside Nuart Aberdeen’s Chalk Don’t Chalk workshops which encourage children and families to create their own chalk street art pieces.Mural by Nuno ViegasTo launch the festival on Thursday June 9th, internationally renowned photographer and subcultural legend Martha Cooper joins us direct from The Congo for a special screening of Martha: A Picture Story, followed by an audience Q+A at the Belmont Cinema, and on Friday June 10th, join festival artists and guests in a chaotic – but possibly educational – street art ‘Fight Club’ hosted by Doug Gillen of Fifth Wall TV at Spin, Aberdeen.NUART PLUS The extended Nuart Plus programme includes artist talks, panel debates, film screenings, walking tours and workshops. The theme for this year’s street art conference (10-11 June) at Cowdray Hall follows the festival theme, Reconnect. The two-day program brings artists, researchers, creative practitioners and the public together for the first time since 2019. Highlights include artist talks from festival artists, and panels with local, national and international creative practitioners.Keynote speaker Dr Lucy Finchett-Maddock (UK) unpicks the powerful relationship between art, transgression and power while Dr Stephen Pritchard (UK) will share his thoughts on the recent community turn in street art. Melbourne-based researcher and curator Dr Lachlan MacDowall (AU) will share his experience curating Flash Forward, a city-wide program combining art and music, while Dr Erik Hannerz (SE) will share his ideas on how we could “re-write” the city, and think outside the grid, by adopting some lessons learned from those who see the city’s surfaces as full of creative possibilities. The program also includes panel discussions for creative professionals on strategies for creating and sustaining independent creative spaces and projects.Mural by Slim SafontIssue 6 of Nuart Journal will be exclusively launched at the Nuart Aberdeen’s Street Art Conference, on Saturday 11th of June. Nuart Journal was first published in 2018 to widespread critical acclaim. Professor Jeff Ferrell, from Texas Christian University has called Nuart Journal “the most exciting mix of political, visual, and intellectual energy I’ve seen in a long time!”Working in collaboration with Aberdeen Inspired and Aberdeen City Council, the multi-award winning Nuart Aberdeen will once again transform the streetscape of the Granite City.Mural by Martin WhatsonInstallation by Martha CooperMural by Mohamed L’GhachamMural by Erin HollyMural by James KlingeMural by Jacoba NiepoortInstallation by Miss PrintedMural by Jofre Oliveras More

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      “Pulling Faces” by Fanakapan in Aberdeen, Scotland

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      The Dorset-born, London-based street artist Fanakapan brought a smile to Aberdeen this week – two in fact – with his perspective-defying street art, the fifth artist to appear for Nuart Aberdeen Summer 2021.Fanakapan is the latest ‘artist in residence’ in the Granite City curated by Nuart to bring new life to its walls.With a background in prop making, Fanakapan began creating hyper realistic visuals of real life objects in the early 2000’s. Free-hand yet technical, eye-catching but with literal and metaphorical depth, Fanakapan is best known for gleaming metallic balloons floating their way across canvases and city walls around the world. His works have earned him a stellar reputation within the urban contemporary art scene.For Nuart, he added his unique style to NHS Building, the Frederick Street Clinic, with the piece ‘Pulling Faces’ a fitting goodwill message for the city and its health service.The huge smiley faces, one rendered in a ‘3D’ style while the other wears its own pair of red and blue 3D glasses, are visible on West North Street all summer long and beyond.Hit the jump for more photos of Fanakapan’s work. Photo credits: Clarke Joss More

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      Mural by Henrik Uldalen in Aberdeen, Scotland

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      Henrik Uldalen was the second artist to descend on The Granite City for this years Nuart Aberdeen festival, which due to covid restrictions has taken the form of a series of artist in residence projects. The festival has an ongoing series of projects that aims to give everyone a lift – by reconnecting with those spaces and places that have become a part of them.Henrik Aarrestad Uldalen (1986) is a self-taught artist whose creative production revolves around classic figurative painting, presented in a contemporary manner. Henrik explores the dark sides of life, nihilism, existentialism, longing and loneliness, juxtaposed with fragile beauty. Though a figurative painter, his focus has always been the emotional content rather than narratives. The atmospheres in his work is often presented in a dream or limbo-like state, with elements of surrealism.The artist’s practice helps him grasp his entity, expressing “I paint because I need to paint. I have always had things in my life that I need to work out, and I’ve found that the best way is to take it out in the studio.”It’s rare that Henrik works in public space, most of his time being dedicated to his studio practice, but with a background in graffiti, tackling outdoor walls is something he is also comfortable with. This will be his second mural with Nuart having joined us in Stavanger, his mother’s home town, back in 2016.Check out below for more images of Henrik’s masterpiece. Photo credits: Clarke Joss|@clarkejossphotography More

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      “STUCK UP” by Nuart Aberdeen Summer 2021 in Aberdeen, UK

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      Nuart Aberdeen have called on the people of Aberdeen to be part of a record breaking new street art project. ‘Stuck Up’ is a worldwide collaboration which will take place in the city centre this July.Location photoNuart Aberdeen will be pasting up between July 1st and August 1st In a unique effort to put this art form firmly under the public spotlight. The project have over 1500ft of walls space so that means not only works curated by Nuart founder Martyn Reed in collaboration with fly-post legends UNCLE, a revolutionary wall of street posters by London’s Flyingleaps who are celebrating their fifth anniversary, but your art too.Submissions are now open, send it, and as long as it isn’t massively offensive.Ship your posters, poems, print outs, photos and collages to :“STUCK UP”THE ANATOMY ROOMSMARISCHAL COLLEGESHOE LANE, ABERDEENAB10 1AN, UK“As corona shut down large-scale arts venues across the globe, so festivals and large-scale mural productions met the same fate. At the same time, we witnessed a huge upsurge of creativity outside of those institutions: DJs streaming sets; opera singers delivering arias from their balconies. Within Street Art, we saw a renewed interest in smaller, more human-scale projects.In many ways, Paste-Ups and Locative Collages, disciplines that demand little more than a tabletop, scissors, magazines and /or paper, are as much related to “craft” as to the rarified world of contemporary art. But perhaps this is what the world needs right now: a less ‘stuck-up’ and judgmental look at the collective capacity of our communities to engage in shaping public space. A return to a more honest involvement in art as it’s created within cities.” Martyn Reed, Nuart Director and FounderLocation PhotoLocation PhotoA Paste-Up is simply an artwork on paper, pasted to a wall with wheat- paste, a form of self-made glue that – in America at least – became the name of the actual practice.Paste Ups are more often than not regarded as an artworks in their own right, usually created in the studio before being transplanted on the streets. The practice crosses over into notions of the more familiar fly-posting when art becomes the vessel for political sentiments and social calls to action. Locative Collages are a relatively new iteration of this idea, wherein small collages are created and then pasted, or “located”, in public spaces.Partners in this project :Aberdeen Inspired | @abdnispiredAnatomy Rooms | @anatomyroomsflyingleaps | @flyingleaps2016UNCLE | @unlcle_insta More