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    ‘Started Again’ – Dilk Print Drop

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    Started Again is Bio Editions debut print release by Nottingham based graffiti artist, Dilk. Three editions of the print will be available to purchase at 3pm BST on Thursday 3rd August via their online store.Adapted from his ‘True Love’ canvas exhibited as part of the permanent collection at STRAAT Museum Amsterdam, each 87 x 67cm print celebrates this monumental 3.5 x 5m original artwork in a new form.Notts lad Steven Dilks began his long-standing career in graffiti as a writer in the 1980’s, prolifically producing work on the streets from a young age. Taking early old school graffiti influences and turning them into an ever-evolving contemporary art style – combined with his hunger for travelling and new connections – has established Dilk as an important part of the UK’s graffiti history.Today his recognisable abstract style situates his work in leading urban contemporary museums as it takes a contemporary twist on traditional graffiti lettering. Combining bold marks and colours with intricate finer details, each new piece maps an ever-changing amalgamation of abstracts, dreamlike colour pallets, sharp lines and drip work. Cop one today while you can. More

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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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      John Fekner – Detective Show – Bio Editions Book Release

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      The latest release from UK publishing house Bio Editions is a photography book from John Fekner, entitled ‘Detective Show’. Featuring a foreword by legendary art critic, Carlo McCormick, the title explores the formative steps of street-art-as-installation, transporting readers back to 1970s Queens, New York, and shining a light on an era of authentic, artistic freedom.Detective Show maps the conception and creation of a strikingly unique outdoor urban art event organised in 1978, spanning the breadth of an unloved park in Jackson Heights, Queens, NYC. Contributors included Fekner himself, Don Leicht, and numerous acclaimed artists, including Richard Artschwager and Gordon Matta-Clark.Fekner ultimately decided to invite those he shared studio space with in the P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center to join him in hiding works across the park, including Richard Artschwager, Gordon Matta-Clark, Len Bellinger, Don Leicht, Frances Hynes, Claudia DeMonte and Karen Shaw among others.Envisioned as a ‘beyond the visible’ hide-and-seek art game of sorts, with visitors given clues and urged to seek out the works strewn across the concrete expanses or even hidden among the trees, Fekner’s objective was simply to create thoughtful interaction with surroundings through art, to the benefit of the public, young and old alike. The end result, he hoped, would provide what he thought of as ‘the magic of discovery by happenstance’.Careful to ensure that the painted and sculpted contributions worked in harmony with the space, Fekner notes he “had to place some restrictions on the artists – no monumental stuff that might disturb the park.”Interspersed between photographs documenting the scope and joy of the show, artists fondly recall a period of artistic freedom that felt unencumbered by the trappings of commercial art.“It’s hard to remember what an exciting and different time 1978 was in the art world. It was pre-PR machines, hype, mega-money, business plans,” notes DeMonte.“For a few weeks in the spring of 1978, about two hundred kids were exposed to original artwork in their own backyard, by some of the most renowned artists of the day,” adds Dave Santaniello, “and that experience changed their perception of their environment forever.”Fekner himself was particularly pleased by the low-key nature of the show’s impact: “The Detective Show was quite unlike current street art festivals with their spectacular large murals, bright colours and street fair atmosphere.“The show was quiet and removed; distanced from the usual New York art world locations and audiences. Extremely low key, it was a temporary art installation about subtlety, nuance, and the magic of discovery by happenstance.”Many of the artists involved in the show have since gone on to become revered names within the contemporary art world, some were renowned before they took part, and others went on to teach, or lead ‘ordinary’ lives. This only serves to further act as tribute to a show that was created with solely the art and those who would experience it in mind, a great unifying cause for creators that urged others to look for beauty in hidden places.In notable contrast to today’s large scale mural-style street art festivals, this 84-page book charts an ideologically-pure reinvention of the urban landscape for the benefit of all, made without corporate sponsorship or underlying motives.Like the show itself, the book – which includes numerous lovingly-printed photographs documenting the event, flyers, newspaper clippings & other ephemera, and written recollections by many of the artists themselves – is a love letter to the innovation of art within public spaces.Two editions of the book, including those featuring limited-edition prints, will be available from 5pm on 1st December 2022.In addition to the first Edition of 450, Bio will also release a special edition of 78, signed by John Fekner. These are sold along with a limited edition gicleé print with silkscreen varnish, signed and numbered by the artist.Detective Show will be available to order via Bio Editions’ website. Photography courtesy John Fekner / Bio Editionswww.bioeditions.com More

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      Mural by SNIK in Aberdeen, Scotland

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      Stencil art duo, SNIK have recently collaborated with Nuart Aberdeen Summer’s third project in this year’s residency programme. Nuart and SNIK have developed a fabulously creative and productive relationship over the last few years. This will be the second visit to Nuart Aberdeen having joined the event in 2018 where they produced the now landmark “Hold Fast Hope” mural.This years theme of “Re-Connecting” is marked by inviting several artists back to the city, a literal attempt to connect artists back to Aberdeen but also to connect citizens back to a post pandemic public space. This particular work, is a companion piece to a similar sister mural in Stavanger, also twinned with Aberdeen. Extending this idea of “re-connection” back across the North Sea.The bridge that the work is produced on connects Union Street, the city’s main high street, to Aberdeen Market, a much maligned building that is now scheduled for demolition and redevelopment. SNIK’s recent body of work has employed and embraced the idea of the ephemeral, something we know all too well in this culture. Soon the physical bridge, the market and artwork will all be gone.What’s left will be the memories of this production, the memories of the art, its digital legacy but also carried in the memory of everyone who either worked on the project or had the pleasure of experiencing it. How it haunts the new development, we’ve yet to find out, but hopefully, in the short time of its existence, it finds a way to connect the past with the future in interesting ways, much like the bridge itself.Snik is an artist duo based in Stamford, UK. Specialising in hand-cut stencil art. As two of the most progressive artists of their kind. Despite of digital techniques, Snik as a male and female partnership always remained true to the origins of their craft with complex, multi-layered and hand cut stencils. The commitment to the discipline’s heritage and their aesthetic of frozen scenes of dynamic action makes their work instantly recognisable. Their art focuses on the conventional and commonplace, such as tangled strands of hair or the textures and folds found on certain fabrics. Their focus on the ordinary elevates the subtle aspects to hint a deeper meaning.Scroll down below for more photos of SNIK’s masterpiece. Photo credite: Clake Joss Photography More

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      “Transcend” by Snik in Gloucestershire, England

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      Artistic duo Snik is back with a new mural entitled “Transcend” for Cheltenham Paint Festival in Gloucestershire, England. The artwork features their signature stencil technique. As stencil artists, they are traditionalists. Where others have moved on to the digital techniques, using laser cutting and computers to support their work, SNIK have remained true to the origins of their craft. They still painstakingly hand cut their complex multi-layered stencils.

      Nik Ellis and Laura Perrett the artists behind Snik are based in Stamford, UK. They have been working across the globe for over a decade, perfecting their skills to become one of the most progressive artists of their kind.
      Snik’s bold aesthetic is characterized by frozen scenes of dynamic action. Their work focuses on the ordinary, such as tangled strands of hair or the folds and textures of fabrics. These subtle aspects are elevated to hint to a deeper meaning. A meaning that remains elusive, for the viewer to draw their own meaning from.
      Check out below for more images of the stunning mural.

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