2017

“Resistance is Female” Takes Over Phone Booths in New York

April 26, 2017 Artists, Interview

The decentralized Resistance, as it turns out, is a majority of Americans.

And leading the charge are women and girls.

So it makes perfect sense that a new grassroots takeover of telephone booth advertising in New York is a campaign called, “Resistance is Female”. Organizers and artists say that the ad takeover project is putting out a message that corporate controlled media seems to be quelling: keep fighting, keep speaking up, persevere.

The artists have put up a couple of dozen or so new art pieces in places where typecast women typically sell shampoo or fashions: a high-jacking of the advertising streetscape which the French and the Situationists would have called détournement in earlier decades.

Gigi Chen for #resistanceisfemale (photo © Jaime Rojo)

This act of “taking over” phone booth spots has become more popular in recent years as artists and activists seize the machinery and claim public space for public messages.

“The Resistance is Female idea came about after the Women’s March in DC,” says Street Artist Abe Lincoln Jr, a contributing artist and one of the few men in the collective. A well known name in the New York Street Art scene, Abe says not all the artists typically come from Street Art but all are now using the streets to get out their visual missives.

“This is a direct message to women (anyone who self identifies as female) and their allies to keep fighting,” he says. “It’s a general message of encouragement to resist the current ‘status quo’ of intolerance. Whatever your battle is, do it! We want to support you in persevering, speaking up, and fighting.”

Participants say they have many more actions planned for the coming months, and they are in it for the long haul, so keep your eyes peeled for the “Resistance is Female” moniker to pop up while you are waiting to cross the street, or on your way to the nightclub, or to do the laundry.

Kim Osborne for #resistanceisfemale (photo © Jaime Rojo)

We asked Abe Lincoln Jr. and Gigi Chen, another artist in the collective, about the new campaign.

BSA: Why is it important to get this message out?
Abe Lincoln, Jr. : The Resistance is Female is a project of visual signposts to encourage continued resistance. It’s easy to get overwhelmed by our unhinged president and it’s easy to get pulled in a million different directions by life. These are here to give support to give support and reminders to women to keep fighting.

BSA: Are all the artists participating in this campaign women and what’s the allure of using the platform of phone booths for the message?
Abe Lincoln, Jr. : No, its predominantly self-identified females, but we want to make it open to everyone, and to be as inclusive as possible. We also are asking people who aren’t necessarily street artists to make work for the project. It brings new voices to the conversation.

Shalini Prasad for#resistanceisfemale (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Placing this message in a space usually reserved for advertising can take people by surprise. It’s a disconnect; they’re expecting to tune out an ad for booze or some TV show and they get a message that says “Hey, keep it up! It’s far from over, and we got work to do!”

BSA: How do you see feminism and art in this polarized political environment?
Gigi Chen: I never used to be interested in politics when I was younger – even less so in artists who make political art who seemed more superficially interested in the topics for their visual shock value. In many ways, Americans are shielded from the actual brutality of war, famine and even the more severe forms of female persecution such as genital mutilation/female circumcision.

Artists are always the ones to really start a dialogue publicly. Feminism as a concept was debated so much in the follow up to the election. That term “Feminism” is something I have lately had to rethink and rediscover. This project “Resistance is Female” is part of that visual movement. If just taking a glance of a poster can start a debate, then indeed this “Feminist” art project is “Political.”

Dusty Rebel for #resistanceisfemale (photo © Jaime Rojo)

The poster project has become something that I have been thinking about everyday since my piece got put up. I wonder “Who am I even to make this poster and throw myself into this movement and debate?” And then I have to stop myself and wonder why I am questioning the validity of my own role in this dialogue to begin with.

I am after all, a hard working artist who has struggled and created and thrown herself into her own work for years. As artists, male and female, we have the capability to visualize and show our points of view in a way that one can understand and, hopefully, empathize with.

The HOPE poster by Shepard Fairy was a huge part of brand recognition for a blossoming Barack Obama campaign and the “WE CAN DO IT” posters mobilized our country during WWII. Even with all these political arguments among friends and strangers, I wonder how much of us generally consider ourselves actually “Political”?

Jack Adam for #resistanceisfemale (photo © Jaime Rojo)

According to organizers there are a number of participants from a variety of backgrounds and disciplines in Resistance Is Female so far, including Abe Lincoln Jr., Sara Erenthal, Maha Al Asaker, Jen Genotype, Kim Osborne, Valerie Lobasso, My Life in Yellow, Astrida Valigorsky, Gigi Chen, Shalini Prasad, Jack Adam, and The Dusty Rebel.

To learn more follow their Instagram page https://www.instagram.com/resistanceisfemale/

This article is also published on the Huffington Post

Skulls Reign On the Street and In Art Shows, Threatening and Humble Reminders

April 25, 2017 Artists

Skulls. We see them on the streets and recently many at art fairs.

The Memento Mori of the streets, these skulls reminding us that one day we all will be dead. Every single one. These are occasional, unplanned in pattern, surprising in appearance on the public stage perhaps.

Andrew Schoultz at Volta New York 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

But in a culture that glorifies violence and guns in movies, television, video games, rock and roll t-shirts, backpacks… the sight of the skull is old school. Here on the streets there are one or two skulls, not like the thousands in an ossuary underground in the Paris Catacombes.

Stephen Wilson at Scope New York 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Possibly these skulls appear in artworks on the street as an omen; meant to shock, or frighten, induce dread. Certainly uniforms have carried logos and insignia with skulls- from Nazis to US Marines to Pirates of Penzance to Cypress Hill the images of skulls are more of a threat, a promissory note, an invocation of warrior status.

Mexicans, on the other hand, eat them as sugar cookies for celebrations set aside every autumn called Day of the Dead, where people make peace with the loss of love ones.

Guy Richards Smit at Spring Break Art Show, New York 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

In the end, perhaps it is not the warlike associations. It may be the great leveling force of death, bringing every person to one level, that fascinates us. Regardless of where your body is buried, the rains will wash your bones into the oceans of time, and that is all you will be.

Maybe too it is healthy to keep these facts in mind despite all the drama, the tribulations, the wealth, the status, the suffering, the ignominy. Jim Morrison said no one here gets out alive, which is obvious, and funny as hell.

Here are some reminders of that fact on the street and elsewhere.

An unidentified artist in Hong Kong. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Scott Campbell at Scope New York 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Damien Hirst at Art Central Art Fair 2017 – Hong Kong. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Epic Uno on the streets of Brooklyn, NY. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

An MSK Crew member on the streets of Brooklyn, NY. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

An unidentified artist at Scope New York 2017 . (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Henry Hussey at Volta New York 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Niloufar Banisdr at Scope New York 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Marina Capdevila Brings Her Seniors to the Winery

April 24, 2017 Artists

When muralist Marina Capdevila is in Miami her senior ladies are in a convertible heading to the beach and when in Brooklyn they buy a hamburger and fries on the sidewalk.

Now visiting a winery cooperative just south of her native Barcelona, the illustrator chooses men and donkeys.

Marina Capdevila. Gratallops, Spain. April 2017. (photo © lluis Olive Bulbena)

“The mural commemorates the 100 years of the Gratallops Winery Cooperative,” says photographer Lluis Olive Bulbena, who shares some images of the new mural.

“Gratallops is a small municipality of 250 inhabitants about 180 km south of Barcelona, part of the famous wine region of Priorat.” Absent Capdevila’s typical on-point observations of seniors encountering the modern world with irony, the characters and action here are more typical and straightforward, but still with a sense of humor.

Marina Capdevila. Gratallops, Spain. April 2017. (photo © lluis Olive Bulbena)

To learn more about the winery cooperative in Gratallops, click HERE.

BSA Images Of The Week: 04.23.17

April 23, 2017 Artists, BSA Images Of The Week

Boom! There it is! This is springtime and there is a lot of new stuff popping up like tulips and out like cherry blossoms. If you didn’t get to the Martha Cooper opening at Steven Kasher gallery this week it is open during the week- a great cross section of her work during the last four decades or so. Additionally the Richard Hambleton film “Shadowman” debuted at the Tribeca Film Festival Friday night and is making a lot of waves and you can see works of his at Woodward Gallery right now.

Also this week a group of New York Street Artists officially are suing McDonalds for using their street work in long-form commercials without permission – a story we first brought to fore and we subsequently discussed – including giving one of the artists who was deeply affected a platform to speak. It remains to be seen who is directly responsible for this infringement but that doesn’t stop the fabulous loose talk and salacious assertions. Some people are lovin’ it.

Here’s our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring: Add Fuel, C3, Cash4, D7606, Cope, Don Rimx, Hardened Lock, Hervé, Immaker, Isaac Cordal, Jaune, Julien De Casabianca, Lunge Box, Okuda, Order55, Phil, and Queen Andrea.

Top image: Collaboration with Add Fuel and Jaune (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Add Fuel and Jaune collaboration in Aberdeen, Scotland. Nuart Aberdeen 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Raf Urban (photo © Jaime Rojo)

#missingobama (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Raf Urban (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Don Rimx drops the can… (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Don Rimx (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Cope and Okuda collaboration. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

D7606 with Kafka is Famous in Aberdeen, Scotland. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

C3 in Aberdeen, Scotland. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Hervé in Aberdeen, Scotland. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Queen Andrea and Cash4 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

A stencil by an unidentified artist reminds us of Russian geometric modern art from the revolution. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Isaac Cordal in Aberdeen, Scotland. Nuart Aberdeen 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Phil (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Hardened Lock (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Lunge Box . Imamaker (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Order55 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Julien de Casabianca/Outings Project in Aberdeen, Scotland. Nuart Aberdeen 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Untitled. Spring 2017. Manhattan, NY. April 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Anna Maga for “12 + 1” Project In Barcelona

April 22, 2017 Artists

Saturday is a good day to get into your own creative projects and try stuff that you don’t have time to do usually. We always like to walk past the local walls to see what people are creating. Checking in on this community wall in Sant Feliu de Llobregat to see what’s going up in the neighborhood, we find this is the new intervention from Anna Maga at Kaligrafics.

Anna Maga at Kaligrafics. La Noche. Contorno Urbano “12 x 1” 2017. Barcelona. (photo © Alex Miró)

A fan of graffiti jams, roller skating and figurative painting, Maga Anna is a local illustrator, mural painter, children’s educator, and commercial designer. The project is a part of a community wall initiative by Contorno Urbano in Barcelona called “12 x 1”. Have a look. Where are your paints?

Anna Maga at Kaligrafics. La Noche. Contorno Urbano “12 x 1” 2017. Barcelona. (photo © Alex Miró)

BSA Film Friday 04.21.17 – Vids from Nuart Aberdeen 2017

April 21, 2017 Artists

Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.

Now screening :
1. ADD FUEL – Nuart Aberdeen 2017
2. Alice Pasquini – Nuart Aberdeen 2017
3. Isaac Cordal – Nuart Aberdeen 2017
4. M-City in Aberdeen for Nuart 2017 via BrooklynStreetArt.com

BSA Special Features: Vids from Aberdeen

Doug Gillen from Fifth Wall TV shadowed artists at work in Aberdeen, Scotland last week and began a series of videos that give you an idea about their art and their individual approach to it. Today we have the first three freshly released from Nuart Aberdeen for your enjoyment.

ADD FUEL – Nuart Aberdeen 2017

So, how do you get the party started in Aberdeen? You Add Fuel! The artists’ practice of tile making back home in Portugal is translated here by his study of local Scottish decorative motifs and tradition – with one layer tearing back to reveal another beneath it.

Alice Pasquini – Nuart Aberdeen 2017

Roman Street Artist Alice Pasquini has a color palette rather custom made for nautical scenes and seaside cities- and somehow brings a Mediterranean air of romance to this stormy Scottish city on the North Sea. Her figures and portraits seem to appear by surprise on small sections of doorways or corners of disused billboards – and this larger mural sized piece is rightly juxtaposed on Ship Row almost across from the Aberdeen Maritime Museum.Video by Doug Gillen/Fifth Wall TV.

Isaac Cordal – Nuart Aberdeen 2017

The Spanish Street Artist continued his indirect critique of corporate capitalists by installing his little grey-suited businessmen throughout the oil city that has been shaken by markets. For some reason, the scale makes the figures comic, and the context of the great wide world helps put these soldiers of white-collar shenanigans into a position of low impact. But we’re just kidding ourselves if we think they are inconsequential – they are the enablers of the machine. These are the human levers of the oligarchy who Isaac Cordal is perching on ledges, balancing on wires, placing on terraces staring intently at spreadsheets and stock numbers on their phones. Now his miniature worried men are perched all over Aberdeen. Can you spot them? Video by Doug Gillen/Fifth Wall TV

M-City for Nuart Aberdeen 2017. Video by BSA

Who would like to experience the slow ascent into the air on a cherry picker with M-City as you survey his new completed mural for Nuart Aberdeen? This short home made video by Jaime Rojo gives you a look at a street level perspective while travel mills around the freshly painted piece.

Many thanks to Doug/Fifth Wall for sharing his video work here with BSA readers. For for information about Fifth Wall please go HERE.

Twitter @FifthWallTV

https://www.instagram.com/fifthwalltv/

“Martha Cooper” Solo Exhibition Reveals Many Unseen “Action Shots”

April 20, 2017 Artists, Interview

An intrepid photographer who has launched a million dreams (and perhaps a few thousand careers) in graffiti and Street Art with her photography that captured crucial and seminal aspects of our culture that others overlooked.

That is just one way of seeing this brand new collection of images by Martha Cooper that is spread across one wall featuring artists at work, sometimes intimately. Here is where you see 102 individual shots of artists at work, a stunning testament to the range of art-making techniques that are practiced in the public realm, as well as a testament to the passion and curiosity of the woman behind the lens.

Martha Cooper. HE3 with His Notebook of Graffiti Writing, Lower East Side, New York, NY 1978 – 1980. Steven Kasher Gallery.

For Ms. Cooper’s first solo photography show in New York, Steven Kasher Gallery is featuring 30 new editions of her legendary street art photographs, the ones that have burned themselves into the collective memory of New York and of our streets in the 1970s and 1980s. While her photographs in the 1984 seminal “Subway Art” and her early Hip Hop street shots may be what she is most known for by artists and collectors and fans in cities around the world to which she travels, the new exhibit also contains more than a foreshadowing into the vast collection of important images she has not shown to us.

Clearly she could fill her own museum with the ephemera she has collected as well; the books, clothing articles, black books, stickers, personal drawings that capture her eye and invoke a conversation that happened in the street, under ground, in the train yards. Some of the ephemera is here in a vitrine, much too small to contain everything – for additional context and perhaps to burnish the “living legend” Street Cred that one gains by sticking in the trenches with artists over many decades.

This week during the installation of the show Ms. Cooper also shared with us the valuable history that illustrates the significance of some of the pieces.

Martha Cooper. Girls Dancing to Disco Music From a Bar Against Graffiti Walls, Lower East Side, New York, NY 1978. Steven Kasher Gallery.

Of a 1982 vest painted by graffiti writer Caine1, she explains that shortly after he made the vest for her he was shot – and the photo of the train with the skyline is a memorial to him. A photo spread of a train painted by graffiti writer Spin from that same year is accompanied by the original sketch he did for it in carefully drawn bold letters aimed at the New York Mayor who made war against graffiti, “Dump Koch”. The Keith Haring drawing and dedication in her note book we recognize because she brought it with her to the Haring exhibit dinner at the Brooklyn Museum a few years ago, occasionally bringing it out to show to other guests. Next to it a photo of Martha as a small child, camera in hand, the daughter of a photographer and camera store owner in Baltimore. These are objects and memories that have great meaning to her, and to many others who will see this collection.

This is not a retrospective but it is the first time a New York gallery has dedicated a serious solo show to a photographer whose work has received numerous tributes throughout the world, including the dedication of a new library in her name in the Urban Nation museum in Berlin opening this September. In many ways it is remarkable that aside from the Museum of The City of New York no major museum in New York has recognized the invaluable contributions her professional life’s work has made to the city, let alone to the history of graffiti, hip hop, Street Art, photography, popular culture.

Martha Cooper. Shy 147 Hanging From Wrecked Train in Yards, Brooklyn, NY, 1981. Steven Kasher Gallery.

As appreciable as the well-mounted collection here is, it is a small, potent sampling of Cooper’s careers as a photographer, documentarian, ethnographer, preservationist, and reporter worldwide over a half century of travel and investigation. Without these images, crucial information about the creators, techniques and culture of graffiti and Street Art and the culture of art in the streets would be unknown. Yet she’s eager to share more of her many excursions of study into other cultures and subcultures, like traditional tattooing in Japan, and a project comparing two neighborhoods in Baltimore and Southwest Township, South Africa, and a uniquely artful recycling program in Brazil. Even the simple practices of city kids at play has often captured her attention and she has documented it for decades.

The last few years have been a whirlwind of global travel for Ms. Cooper, including trips to nearly every continent for Street Art festivals, graffiti jams, museum and gallery exhibitions, and special events in her honor – she even gave a TED talk in Vienna recently. Taking a moment to cool her heels back in NYC, this show gives us a glimpse into the outstanding and valuable historical archives that Ms. Cooper is turning her attention to these days.

Martha Cooper. Vitrine display. Ms. Cooper as a young girl holding her Brownie Camera. A dedicated sketch book by Keith Haring . Steven Kasher Gallery. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

“This show is important to me at this time because I’m at a point in my life where I want to shoot less and organize my archives more,” she tells us. “I’ve been a professional photographer since 1968, almost 50 years. Exhibits help me think about how my work fits together. I want people to see me as a photographer first, not only a documenter of graffiti and hip hop.”

“Having a show at a gallery that specializes in photography helps accomplish this goal. Although I was never interested in being a fine art photographer, I’m happy and somewhat surprised to see that my photographs have a collectible value.” Modest about her talents as usual, even Martha appears to not realize the value of her contribution to so many and so much of the culture.

Martha Cooper signing the print of Futura 2000 whole car “Break”, Steven Kasher Gallery. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

BSA: Is this your first solo exhibition in NYC?
Martha Cooper: Not really. I had a solo Street Play exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York in 1980, I had a lot of exhibits that Akim Walta organized when Hip Hop Files came out in 2004. I also had the NYCasitas show in East Harlem last year, and there have been others. However it’s my first solo exhibition in NYC at a photography gallery.

BSA: Is this sort of a retrospective?
MC: Again–not really. Although there are photos from 1970 (tattoo) to 2016, there are major projects that this exhibit doesn’t include–for example all the documentation I did for City Lore, or in Baltimore. My archive contains many, many more topics and projects than are included in this exhibit so I don’t want to call it a retrospective. This show is heavy on graffiti and street art with a couple of photos each from Tokyo Tattoo and New York State of Mind.

Martha Cooper. Vitrine display. “Dump Koch” train by Spin and the original artist’s sketch. The first edition of Subway Art . Steven Kasher Gallery. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Martha Cooper. Vitrine display. Martha Cooper miniature train. Steven Kasher Gallery. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Martha Cooper. Graffiti denim vest by Caine1. Steven Kasher Gallery. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Martha Cooper. The action shots wall. This wall includes 102 photos with as many artists (there are a couple of shots with the same artist) and when one notes the artists’ nationalities and the countries in which the photos were taken the wall spans more than 22 countries. This might be the most personal work of Ms. Cooper from the whole exhibition, with many of the shots never made public until now. Often shot in close proximity, the shots are intimate and personal. Some of them depict the artists hamming it up for the camera and others show the artists immersed in their work or adopting a serious posture. Steven Kasher Gallery. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Martha Cooper. The action shots wall. Steven Kasher Gallery. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

For further information on Steven Kasher Gallery MARTHA COOPER today’s opening please click HERE

Martha Cooper
Exhibition: April 20th – June 3rd, 2017
Opening Reception: Thursday, April 20th, 6-8PM

Steven Kasher Gallery
515 West 26th Street, NYC

Nuart Aberdeen 2017 Already Has Locals Saying “Haste Ye Back!”

April 19, 2017 Artists

The sky is still twilight blue above the streets of Aberdeen at 21:00 this time of year and as you walk the city’s edge on the beach of the North Sea the winds pick up with a chilly bluster. Of course, that’s just for this minute. In a half hour it may be a gentle warm caress, or you’ll be pelted with hail and sleet mercilessly. Locals like to say that this northern Scottish seaside city has 4 seasons in one day. During one Street Art tour that we gave for 350 Aberdeenians on the day before Easter, we cycled through those seasons, twice.

This is Nuart, the festival begun in Stavanger, Norway in 2001 by loveable bad boy and (some would argue) curatorial visionary Martyn Reed which invites Street Artists from around the world to partake in thoughtful aesthetic excursions on the street and in public space.

The cumulative success of Nuart’s indoor/outdoor programs is now well recorded and looked to as a model. Remarkably they have risen despite tensions that occur when commingling frameworks of illegality and institutional acceptance; including a relatively new academic rigor that is now investigating the family of practices called Urban Art, their absorption into the commercial market as contemporary art, the badass anti-establishment musings of jilted outcasts who want nothing of it, and a somewhat romantic notion of communicating with the public in a meaningful dialogue.

Jaune. Detail. Nuart Aberdeen 2017. Aberdeen, Scotland. April 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Ah, but this is the bumpy, potholed, slimy street along which counter-culture becomes culture and the marginalized becomes the mainstream – producing a modicum of nausea for all involved. While not explicitly aiming for legitimacy on these fronts, the Nuart Festival has gradually metamorphosed into a standard by which some others are judged, with reason.

Now for the first time Nuart exports its hard won and uniquely prickly formula in a perhaps more reserved manner to this new, old city which lies 500 kilometers across the North Sea in Scotland.

This is the stirring, storied North Sea known globally for the black oil lurking beneath it, and the two cities of Stavanger and Aberdeen have both been impacted greatly by the plunge of world-wide petroleum prices since the end of the last decade; a downturn described by London’s Telegraph as “vicious”. We may have stumbled upon evidence of this during one of our walking tours when we remarked on the large number of people there who were interested in seeing the new artworks and one woman cracked with some sarcasm, “that’s because none of us has jobs.”

Jaune. Nuart Aberdeen 2017. Aberdeen, Scotland. April 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

And here we are with eleven international artists to ease the grayness of this historic and granite Gothic city by the sea where daffodils cover the meadow in Union Terrace Gardens and single malt whisky eases the sight of iron leg fetters in the 17th century prison museum called Tolbooth.

When it comes to Nuart Aberdeen the people whom we met are nearly exuberant in their responses, even awestruck by the appearance of this new art in their city. With the introduction of aerosol, brush paint, wheat-paste, stencils, miniature sculpture, and poetry to street walls, it is as if a hidden pent-up desire for art in the public sector has burst open, a geyser if you will.

“I think there are quite a lot of places now in Aberdeen that are quite plain. It’s like there are a lot of empty canvasses. It’s good to see something be done with them,” says Mark, who’s touring the new pieces through the streets with Julia, who’s originally from the capital Edinburgh. Map in hand, the couple appears to be about 30 and they say that while they’ve seen work like this in other cities, they’re glad to see something more youthful now appearing here in a historical seaport that boasts soaring, turreted and spired cathedrals and narrow stone streets.

Jaune. Nuart Aberdeen 2017. Aberdeen, Scotland. April 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

“I’ve been to Leipzig lots of times and there’s lots of sides of buildings,” says Mark, “they’re similar in size to these, with lots of murals in the city center, and it really kind of brightens the place up, makes it a lot more lively.”

“Welcome to a city investing it its city and its culture,” says Councilor George Adam, the Lord Provost, a prestigious post and an ancient office with its roots in the 13^th century. During a reception with other members of the Aberdeen City Council and the local business improvement district (BID) named “Aberdeen Inspired,” Mr. Adams says that he is excited by Nuart and has received a lot of positive feedback as well.

Add Fuel. Nuart Aberdeen 2017. Aberdeen, Scotland. April 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Indeed, the reception from youth, middle aged and senior patrons at our 14 short-video film lecture and the sold-out screening of the premiere of “Finding Bansky” at the independent art theater Belmont Filmhouse was ardent, enthusiastic and full of inquiries afterward. The walking tours had more people than anyone had predicted, with a few people using canes and others pushed in strollers. It would appear that the worldwide Street Art phenomena had seemed frustratingly out of reach for some of the young people, who have been fascinated by it from afar. Seeing these works by international artists here in their city was like a jolt of electricity.

During an entertaining slide show by festival participant Julian De Casabianca at the Lecture Theatre at the Anatomy Museum Thursday night, the steeply angled seats held a full capacity crowd, with many sitting on the floor and steps. The somewhat inebriated and raucous artists and students in their twenties hooted and hollered and pounded on desks during the 50 minute lecture which included mobsters, murder, the Holocaust, stolen artworks, and Street Art – specifically the museum art images which De Casabianca has been wheat-pasting on public streets for all to see for the last decade or so called “The Outings Project.”

Add Fuel. Nuart Aberdeen 2017. Aberdeen, Scotland. April 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Martin Reed’s curation of the program is wise and the selections are contextual from the perspective that Nuart Aberdeen 2017 presents an array of disciplines from a solid thoughtful selection of perspectives, each attached to the history of graffiti and Street Art from their unique evolution of practices – as well as to the culture of Aberdeen.

Germany’s Herakut dominates one concave wall of Aberdeen Market overlooking “The Green” with their improvisational blending of illustration style portraiture, textual flourish, and symbols germane to the city. De Casabianca chose images form the Aberdeen Art Gallery of two children – haunting in a narrow street known by local folklore for ghosts of children who were sold as slaves to America in previous centuries.

Belgium’s Jaune peppers doorways and electrical boxes with multi-layer stencils of fluorescent-vested municipal workers in humorous scenarios. These are partnered in scale by small grey-suited and somber businessmen by Spain’s Isaac Cordal, which are hidden before your eyes and camouflage into the daily city until you discover one standing on a ledge, balancing on an electrical line, or sitting atop a CCTV camera.

Robert Montgomery. Nuart Aberdeen 2017. Aberdeen, Scotland. April 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Norway’s Martin Whatson has perhaps the most obvious reference to the locality, with a golfing figure swiping into a plume of colorful graffiti tags. With Donald Trump’s golf course only minutes away, the piece raises an immediate association with a guy who is heartily disliked here. The Street Artist named Add Fuel create an enormous tile-patterned wall that refers to local motifs and decorative artisans on a wall that can be seen easily by pedestrians looking from Aberdeen’s Union Bridge the largest single-span granite arch in the world. Italy’s Alice Pasquini brings imagery of the harbor into her figurative pieces and Norway’s Nipper works directly with local artists to compile gifts of art posted on clipboards around the city.

This is not to say that Reed is running from possible controversial material or opinion: Poland stencilist M-City is without doubt critiquing the oil industry with his oil barrels flying through the sky and tankers in the sea, the UK poet Robert Montgomery’s piece addresses topics like the definition of modernism, race, and social equality, and Australia’s Fintan Magee’s very large mural diptych obliquely references rising sea levels and man made environmental degradation.

Martin Whatson pays an homage to graffiti writers and taggers, from whom much of today’s Street Art and mural festivals evolved. “Luckily we got one of the local guys who came past,” says Aberdeen photographer and expert art blogger Jon Reid, “He left a tag in the bottom right hand side. So at least he managed to get a bit of ‘local’ in as well.” Nuart Aberdeen 2017. Aberdeen, Scotland. April 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

In review of the successful event and the relatively young history of the Street Art movement as one that is continually in motion, a few points come to mind as worth mentioning: The first is the ongoing discussion of illegal graffiti and Street Art culture giving way to legal mural festivals that have as their aim some form of business improvement and/or gentrification in a city, particularly when a city previously persecuted and derided the organic and illegal artists who began the scene.

This situation is not specific to Aberdeen, but the concern probably will come up in conversations (including during panel discussions at Nuart) and at the very least it is an irony that art practices once reviled or verboten are now to some extent embraced as worthwhile because they can be economically advantageous. These are not direct relationships, but close ones certainly.

Isaac Cordal. Detail. Nuart Aberdeen 2017. Aberdeen, Scotland. April 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Similarly there have been a few so-called Street Art festivals in recent years where the primary driver is commercial brand-building and while they give opportunities to artists they somehow cheapen the dialogue between people. It is always ironic, if inevitable, when a subculture becomes more closely associated with mainstream culture, sometimes specifically because of its cache as being rebellious. The trick here would be to accommodate the activist voices in the program, and clearly Nuart aims to do so with panache.

An argument could be made that counters the quick-on-the-draw “selling out” charge that says true rebels are somehow abandoning their values by working for “the man”. From our perspective, we’re happy when artists are working, are treated fairly, and when people get to enjoy their work. Even in this second least affordable city in Scotland where artist spaces are at a premium if not scarce altogether, it is a good development to see art on the walls outside and a public dialogue facilitated by art.

Isaac Cordal. Detail. Nuart Aberdeen 2017. Aberdeen, Scotland. April 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

This mural initiative will invariably jump-start two outcomes. One will be a renewed interest in the zone in which the art appears, driving foot traffic and, if all goes according to plan, new business initiatives and increased interest in the arts in general.

Secondly, it will spur an uptick in locally grown Street Art. We already witnessed it mushrooming overnight on surfaces during the days we were in the city and were pleased to learn of many local artists who have been looking for opportunities for exposure in addition to this one and last years’ “Painted Doors” project, which was spearheaded by Aberdeen artist Mary Butterworth. As this local scene continues to coalesce in public space, one hopes that the city will challenge itself to find healthy and proactive ways to support this organic scene as well.

Isaac Cordal. Detail. Nuart Aberdeen 2017. Aberdeen, Scotland. April 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Overall, the first year of Nuart Aberdeen has been hands-down successful by many standards, and talk of a 2018 program has already started popping up in discussions online and elsewhere. From what we could see and hear, the city is longing for more.

“We want you all back! You showed us what can be done!” says Dr. Fiona-Jane Brown, the author of “Hidden Aberdeen” and founder of Graft Theater Company in her comment on Facebook to the Nuart team.

“Haste ye back, loons and quinies!” says Morag Russell, another Facebook commenter as the Nuart artists, production team and assorted misfits say their final goodbyes in a posting. The sentiment rings just as sweet at the song it comes from, like this version from Scotland’s legendary entertainer Andy Stewart.

Isaac Cordal. Detail. Nuart Aberdeen 2017. Aberdeen, Scotland. April 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Isaac Cordal. Nuart Aberdeen 2017. Aberdeen, Scotland. April 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Herakut. Nuart Aberdeen 2017. Aberdeen, Scotland. April 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Herakut. Detail. Nuart Aberdeen 2017. Aberdeen, Scotland. April 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Fintan Magee. Nuart Aberdeen 2017. Aberdeen, Scotland. April 2017. (photo © Jon Reid)

Nipper. This is an interactive piece where the public is invited to use the stencil. Nuart Aberdeen 2017. Aberdeen, Scotland. April 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Nipper. And an enthusiastic street art fan is accepting the invitation. Nuart Aberdeen 2017. Aberdeen, Scotland. April 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

The very supportive people of Aberdeen came out in huge numbers to all four of the official art tours. Nuart Aberdeen 2017. Aberdeen, Scotland. April 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Untitled. We began with pigeons…we must end with pigeons and spring love. Nuart Aberdeen 2017. Aberdeen, Scotland. April 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

We would like to express our gratitude for the professionalism and support of the Nuart Team, to all the volunteers whose work and dedication made our work more efficient and our stay a lot more pleasant, to the team at Aberdeen Inspired and to the people of Aberdeen for being such gracious and generous hosts, and to all the artists whose work we love and admire and for your inspiration and talent. Thank you. We hope to meet again next year.

For more information on Nuart Aberdeen click HERE.

NeverCrew in Hong Kong for “Discordant”

April 18, 2017 Artists

“…our collective obligations towards our environment.”

You wouldn’t think the phrase would need to be said, yet it sounds revolutionary in a consumer-driven, market-driven society. The Swiss duo NEVERCREW are clear in their intentions.

As ever.

The Discordant exhibition is still running at Above Second gallery in Hong Kong and these images we captured there encapsulate the discordance. Nature versus man. Our desire for convenience, our disregard for the gifts the Earth gives, our total dependence on it nonetheless.

“Discordant emphasizes the juxtaposition of mechanical and natural elements to portray a world where mankind and nature, economy and environment, are constantly at odds with one another,” they say in the press release. They go on to comment on “the exploitation of natural resources, pollution, and particularly overproduction and mismanagement of waste as ‘a signal of an imbalanced relationship with the natural system.’ ”

The gargantuan garbage bag and the fish, the cloud of broken construction mater floating above the gift of wildlife, the ruthless slicing through mechanically of the whale.

It makes you think things like, “Who the hell do we think we are?” as we contemplate NEVERCREW’s “examination of humankind’s core struggle to strike a balance between the demands of lifestyle, efficiency and our collective obligations towards our environment.”

NeverCrew “Discordant” Is currently open to the public at Above Second Gallery in Hong Kong. The exhibition ends this Saturday, April 22nd.

BSA Images of the Week : Nuart Aberdeen Edition

April 17, 2017 Artists

End of Passover for many, the best day of Easter weekend for others, just another spring day for still others, and a fine finish to our little Aberdeen excursion. As we ready ourselves to charge forward on small streets in this city that has a severe case of Multiple Weather Disorder, we’re bringing scarves, gloves, umbrellas, a zip-lock bag with salt, sun block, swim suits, a snow shovel and a road flare in the backpack, for emergencies. Also a small flask of Highland Park 18 single malt skotch whisky for medical purposes.

Top image: A new figure by Isaac Cordal. The Donald taking his toys for a walk. Nuart Aberdeen 2017. Aberdeen, Scotland. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Isaac Cordal. Nuart Aberdeen. Aberdeen, Scotland. (photo © Jaime Rojo) Perhaps needless to say, but the American president is not popular in any way here, and we sort of get reminded of it a few times a day – wherever we go.

The panel discussions with Evan Pricco and Pedro Soares and artists and Brandalism representatives were intellectually stimulating and sometimes deliciously gossipy. According to one audience member who attended Saturday’s talks, a favorite feature was when one participant was when a German guy in the audience took an opportunity to launch a diatribe against simply pretty pleasant public art and to compare this pleasantry with Hitler and death camps. That sort of thing always advances the conversation, don’t you think? But the point is well taken, even if it was delivered by hammer.

Interesting to see that smaller pieces are also popping up here and there in the areas that these large and small approved artworks have appeared. You can sense again that there is an excited contingent of visual artists here who are feeling like they need an outlet and an outlet. We spoke with some really enthusiastic art students at the Drummond club, yelling over the thumping electronic music, who had fashioned hats and costumes out of tin foil.

Alexander Campbell, a sprightly and activist artist and student here at Gray’s School of Art who has the intensity of three, explains that the tin hats are really “conspiracy hats”, and speaks about larger issues that his photographic collage work addresses about war profiteering, definitions of terrorism, objectification of people, power, the coercive power of sex. The usual.

It appears that joy and pain are intertwined always, histories overlap with today of the city always includes stories from locals about the white slave trade that flourished here in the area where Julian de Casabianca wheatpasted his two enormous children. Taken directly from images in the collection of the Aberdeen Museum he says, and a stunning installation that acknowledges the cultural history.

The overwhelming response of people on the tour to the pleasant and the unpleasant themes expressed or alluded to in a number of the works in Nuart Aberdeen says a lot about a culture’s willingness to look things frankly in the eye, as well as to just celebrate for the art of it. At the very least, people here say that they are experiencing something new in the public space with many other Aberdeenians, a true measure of the successful engagement of art in the streets.

Okay, gotta go do our last tour. See you all soon.

So here’s our Aberdeen interview with the streets with images from Alice Pasquini, Herakut, Isaac Cordal, Juane, Jet Pack Dinasaur, Julian De Casabianca, and Martin Whatson

Jetsonorama Wraps a House with Pots in Penland, North Carolina

April 17, 2017 Artists

When one thinks of pots and pottery and clay urns, you may imagine them with patterns and motifs wrapped around their exterior. Botanicals, animal life, figures, even architecture, all become decorative elements or patterns. Street Artist Jetsonorama is flipping the script in the North Carolina mountains this week by wrapping a house with photographic images of pottery, and sitting in the woods the presentation is striking, even provocative.

Jetsonorama told us about the project, which he calls “Clay pieces pretending to be contestants on The Apprentice.” But seriously he says it is about a curriculum that was developed to train people for a trade so that they could provide an income for their families. Here below is his description of the genesis for the new curious looking work;

“I’m just completing a week long residency at the Penland School of Crafts which is nestled in the North Carolina mountains. The craft school was founded in 1929 by Lucy Morgan to teach local women how to weave in order to contribute to their families economically. Over the years Penland has added courses in metal smithing, glass blowing, printmaking, photography, clay and has expanded offerings in textiles.

The institution is recognized internationally as a leader in the crafts taught. I was offered the opportunity to spend a little time there to get a feel for the place and to then install work on a building that houses gardening equipment called Green Acres. Having only a day to decide upon an image before sending files to the printer I opted to use a photograph of pots waiting to be placed in a traditional Japanese kiln where the pieces are fired over 8 days.”

BSA Images OF The Week: Nuart Aberdeen Edition

April 16, 2017 Artists, BSA Images Of The Week

Top image: A new figure by Isaac Cordal. The Donald taking his toys for a walk. Nuart Aberdeen 2017. Aberdeen, Scotland. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Isaac Cordal. Nuart Aberdeen. Aberdeen, Scotland. (photo © Jaime Rojo) Perhaps needless to say, but the American president is not popular in any way here, and we sort of get reminded of it a few times a day – wherever we go.

Okay, gotta go do our last tour. See you all soon.

So here’s our Aberdeen interview with the streets with images from Alice Pasquini, Herakut, Isaac Cordal, Juane, Jet Pack Dinasaur, Julian De Casabianca, and Martin Whatson

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