Nuart Day 5: Flying High in the Norwegian Sky

September 5, 2015 Artists

Live from Nuart as it’s happening folks, and the festival is proving to be a rather impressive small beast at this point – one with multiple heads and legs and hands waving paint brushes, aerosol cans, saws, drills, stencils, spot lights, fans, ship buoys, shovels, ladders, helicopter blades….. What?

Friday began with an helicopter ride to take the full scope of the giant Ella & Pitr roof top mural. Here we see Martyn saying good bye to all of us earthlings. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Yes, Martyn Reed gave a healthy scare to a number of guests by inviting them to view the massive Ella & Pitr piece from a helicopter hovering about on Friday in conjunction with a formal dedication ceremony. It’s the only way to truly see it, darling, and that is not simply a clever manner of expression – it is a literal one.

Ella & Pitr. Detail of their roof top mural. More to come. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Ground-based mortals may also see these painted red nails on giant hand inside the public art exhibition planned for Saturday night as the French couple have coupled their installation with the radically smaller scaled sculptures of Isaac Cordel, whose balding concrete curmudgeons lurk and mope and sink into the soil around the perimeter.

All three artists were in the audience at BSA Film Friday LIVE at the cinema downtown, which made us feel relieved because their videos were also featured in our show about PLAY. Thanks to everyone who came, including those sitting in the aisles and on the steps: think we need a bigger theater next time!

Detail of Isaac Cordal and Ella & Pitr collaboration in the Tou Scene tunnels. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Elsewhere the Outings Project liberated a number of museum pieces on walls here and there around the neighborhood, their unsung regal figures set loose yet rigidly posed on concrete blocks in empty lots. Some malformed and miscreant monsters have also popped up, seemingly over night, on pieces of printed news. They look rather similar to the installation of Bortusk Leer in the beer halls of Tou Scene, but not much like the realistic children on cut-out wood in Ernest Zacharevic’s installation nor Pixel Pancho’s three dimensional robot – a symbol used in many of his large scale murals appearing in cities around the world.

Stay tuned for more images, as we are a bit buried under a wealth of them right now but feel compelled to run outside and gather more while the sun is shining and the paint is still wet.

Tor channels Banksy with Ella & Pitr collaboration.(photo © Jaime Rojo)

The Outings Project brings the masters outside onto the walls and Bortusk Leer’s monsters take an art history lesson. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Sandra Chevrier at work inside the Tou Scene tunnels at work on her collaboration with Martin Whatson. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Bordalo II at work inside the Tou Scene tunnels. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Futura at work on a new outside wall project. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Bortusk Leer. Detail of his installation inside the Tou Scene tunnels. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Ernest Zacharevic work in progress inside the Tou Scene tunnels. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Pixel Pancho work in progress inside the Tou Scene tunnels. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

The tractor moving in on the chopper with Martyn on board . (photo © Jaime Rojo)

BSA Film Friday: NUART2015 Live From Stavanger, Norway

September 4, 2015 Artists

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

Now screening :

1. NUART 2015 Special: FUTURA In Action in the Tunnels of Tou Scene

BSA Special Feature: FUTURA in the The Tunnels at Tou Scene by Jaime Rojo

Straight from Nuart 2015 to you, this rare opportunity to be one-on-one with New York/world graffiti and fine artist Futura, a cat who defined a new space for many who came after him on the graffiti and Street Art scene. By embracing the spirit of play, exploration, and experimentation this guy helped transform our expectations about what a graffiti artist can do and he made space for many others to do some exploring and experimenting on their own.

Even 35 years after first making a break from NYC trains for the studio practice and gallery scene, Futura continues to try new ideas and techniques of expression. Somehow no matter how high he flies Futura also keeps it down to earth – so much so that he allowed photographer Jaime Rojo to try some experimenting of his own – Here is Jaime trying his hand at video-making on the scene in Stavanger this week.

Enjoy seeing the man in action as he prepares his brand new piece for the big opening this weekend at Nuart 2015.

FUTURA: NUART 2015. The Tunnels at Tou Scene. By Jaime Rojo/BrooklynStreetArt.com

Futura. Nuart 2015. Tou Scene. Nuart Art Festival. Stavanger, Norway. September 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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If you are in Stavanger please join us tonight for BSA FILM FRIDAY LIVE at the cinema downtown where we will be talking about “Play in the Street”.

Nuart Day 3 : Picking Up Pace and Sandra Chevrier’s Dramatic Eyes

September 3, 2015 Artists

A fever pitch is possibly overstating the tempo but not by much as Day 3 at Nuart continued to be wet and gray and at times a little windy (not typically good for stencil work by the way). A couple of people have gotten a cold – possibly due to painting in the rain for hours on end, possible due to drinking back at the hotel late into the evening, one cannot be quick to surmise. Regardless, the artists are full of industry and the results are appearing right here before your dramatic and alluring eyes.

Sandra Chevrier. Work in progress. Detail. Aftenblad Wall. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Icy and Sot moved to smaller figurative works in site-specific locations while arriving artists like Pixel Pancho and Martha Cooper began their prospective projects, his ivy covered mural awaiting a robot of some sort and hers a projection of her child’s play photography from the streets that will be on display at the Tou Scene opening. We’re eager to see what museum quality works will be appearing suddenly on Stavanger walls from Julien de Casabianca of the Outings Project, who’s just arrived with a number of figures who are itching to get outside.

Sandra Chevrier. Work in progress. Detail. Aftenbladet Wall. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Sandra Chevier and her assistant labored with brushes for about 10 hours to complete her new Aftenblad wall despite winds from off the bay – just in time for Thursday’s dedication by the local newspaper, Stavanger’s largest. Bortusk Leer gradually filled his tunnel installation with sculptural and flat childlike/cheerful renderings of people and monsters and Ernest is projecting kids on the walls to begin his similarly juvenile-themed play scene.

Sandra Chevrier. Work in progress. Detail. Aftenblad Wall. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Futura completed his very large installation and allowed us to shoot some live video of it in process – which we’ll gladly post tomorrow on Film Friday – speaking of which we’re pretty excited about our program tomorrow BSA Film Friday LIVE at the cinema downtown as part of the Nuart PLUS programming where we’ll show video pieces related to this years theme of “Play” under categories of Exploring, Experimenting, and Inventing.

Martin Whatson has been creating a new winged creature and Bodalo II is bringing a horned one to life as the garbage has begun climbing the back walls of the former beer factory and assembling itself into a deer head.

Peering through the garbage bag tree “leaves” is Icy as he attaches the last pieces of green foliage and Isaac Cordal tells us he attached seven new little men on balconies throughout the neighborhood, including a couple on a nearby gas station/carpark overhang – evoking the oil businessmen who are briskly walking through streets here even as the shrinking economy adjusts to lower world oil prices.

Sandra Chevrier… Meanwhile at Tou Scene… Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Thursday starts to really pick up the pace with Nuart Plus programming kicked off by Carlo McCormick, Evan Pricco (Juxtapoz), Harmen de Koop, and Bortusk Leer squaring off for a lively debate (“Should Art Have a Deeper Meaning?”) starting at beer-o’clock sharp (21:30) at a local pub – just after Harmen’s performance/mural “Permanent Education” on the street with Jan Uboe, a Mathematics and Statistics Professor from the Norwegian School of Economics.

After we tally up the numbers we’ll give you a full account.

Nafir. Work in progress. Detail. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Martin Watson. Work in progress. Tou Scene. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Pixel Pancho. Work in progress. Tou Scene. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Bordalo II. Work in progress. Tou Scene. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Bortusk Leer. Work in progress. Tou Scene. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Ernest Zacharevic. Work in progress. Tou Scene. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Ernest Zacharevic. Work in progress. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Ernest Zacharevic has created a work on the wall that mimics a nearby statue “Johanne og Broremann” (Johanne and her little brother) made by Svein Magnus Håvarstein in 1993. Work in progress. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Icy & Sot. Work in progress. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

The light appears as the sun peering through the tree at Icy while he works on the installation he is doing with Sot. Tou Scene. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

A local Stavanger resident watches the action from a secured vantage point. Untitled. Stavanger, Norway. August 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Nuart Day 2: Rain Chases Artists into Tunnels, Futura in Action

September 2, 2015 Artists

Murals and Street Art do not mix well with rain unfortunately so most artists at Nuart headed toward the former beer halls called Tou Scene (or the tunnels) to work on their indoor installations for Saturday’s opening and party here in Stavanger for Nuart 2015. Bortusk Leer had drawn large monsters on plywood to carve out with a handsaw and blasted the completed ones with clouds of fluorescence and primary colors, Icy and Sot were high atop a ladder hanging hundreds of plastic bags from their constructed tree, and Bodalo and Art Ruble rumbled around in a truck with Vegar looking for discarded large pieces of garbage for their deer sculpture.

Futura at work on his tunnel spot for the Tou Scene exhibition. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Of great interest was to see NYC icon Futura at work on his new abstract piece within the tunnel, clearly his mind “in the zone”, his hands and body motions following an internal rhythm that held him in a zen semi-trance; reaching for the small roller with acrylic and aerosol can alternately to map out gestural and constructivist aspects of his new monochromatic piece. Isaac Cordal was inside as well, installing his small sculptures lonely and aloft upon terraces, later mixing large batches of cement in plastic garbage buckets to dump in piles around the perimeter of the tunnel he is sharing with Ella & Pitr.

Futura. Tou Scene exhibition Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Undaunted by inclemency, the expansive French duo braved the rain to work on their new large character wrapped around two sides of a small building, taking a break to eat hot Thai soup from large plastic containers while standing in their raincoats on a scissor lift during a light downpour from the sky.

If their spirits were dampened you would not know it from the lively discussions on logistics between them and from Pitr’s enthusiastic descriptions of a new technique they hoped to try soon which will feature their characters upside down, feet resting on the sky.

Futura at work on his tunnel spot for the Tou Scene exhibition. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

In preparation for her single-wall Aftenblad project on Thursday, fine artist Sandra Chevrier began her collage/painting during the hour or so when rain paused, and Harmen de Koop strolled around town looking for an acceptable location for the live performance he is planning with a renowned economist that involves simple economic theory and a lot of chalk.

In short, the rain is stopping no one at Stavanger and guests and participants keep arriving!

Fra Biancoshock left a message for Martha Cooper before he left town. She promptly found it and shot it when she arrived mid-day. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Sandra Chevrier at work on her tunnel spot for the Tou Scene exhibition. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Icy & Sot at work on her tunnel spot for the Tou Scene exhibition. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Icy & Sot at work on their first mural. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Sandra Chevrier work in progress. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Martin Watson. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Ella & Pitr at work on their third mural. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Bordalo. Who, me?. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Art Ruble and Bordalo ready to hunt for trash for their Tou Scene installation. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Isaac Cordal work in progress for his Tou Scene exhibition. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Untitled. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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Nuart Day 1: Isaac Cordal Installs His Preoccupied Little Businessmen

September 1, 2015 Artists

Tor (@toris64) picked us up at the airport using his hand-made faux-Banksy Nuart sign, wearing his fresh Dismaland t-shirt, and we immediately knew we were home here in Stavanger. Born and raised in this town Tor knows it’s every turn and twist and because he travels extensively for his regular profession, he also gets to explore other cities and take photos of Street Art and share them on Instagram. Luckily there is a pretty notable festival right here and his enthusiasm grows with the opportunity to meet so many of his favorite artists each year.

Isaac Cordal. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. 09-15 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

This small Norwegian town is again hosting a kick-ass mural/street art/graffiti festival again this year and its sort of rainy today but Icy & Sot are painting anyway, as are Ella & Pitr. Ernest Zacharevic has arrived and Martin Whatson has finished his piece, as have Pejac and Dot Dot Dot. Harmen de Koop is devising a live performance with an economist giving a lecture on a wall Thursday (not kidding), Bordalo is gathering garbage and throwing it into the back of a truck for his trash installation, and Martha Cooper just arrived this morning and Tor took her to find a hidden conceptual piece in a doorway by Fra. Biancoshock that says “Martha Please Take a Picture of Me”.

Once settled in yesterday we immediately began tooling around town with Isaac Cordal, the Northern Spanish activist with a big heart in these small sculptures of desperate/guilty/soulless little corporate men who he positions in precarious locations wherever he travels. We carried a bag full of these fellows yesterday while he shouldered an expandable ladder and marched though the hilly streets looking upward, scanning battered Noregian industrial architecture for opportune ledges for his little men to teeter off the edge of.

Isaac Cordal. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. 09-15 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

As we have featured his work numerous times over the years on BSA, it was finally great to meet Cordal and accompany him on his interventions – which sort of magically transform a mundane spot into a stage for his “figurativos” to contemplate their lives. Cordal says they are meant to symbolize many things – one of them being the corrupt wolves in business suits who are running much of the world today, and you immediately know of whom he speaks. Comedic in placement, dastardly in deed, you want them to fall, or jump, but somehow it is better that they are frozen in the midst of their drama, frozen with fright and fear.

Isaac Cordal. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. 09-15 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Cordal also talks about the current romance that many public art fans are having with the mural as a means of public expression (which we can verify) and how he feels like his very small concrete (now resin) men can be just as powerful as a large mural. And in a way we can entirely agree – the placing of these figures transforms the space by engaging your imagination, and you KNOW where that can take you; the key unlocks a part of the viewer that he or she once accessed regularly as a child when wild stallions and robots and Jesus and pop stars and Darth Vader all seemed like plausible characters in the same play. Seeing Isaac and his enthusiasm will assure you that art in the streets can have a formidable impact on a passerby, no matter its diminutive scale.

Isaac Cordal. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. 09-15 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Pixel Pancho Briefly in Bushwick, Now On to Stavanger

August 31, 2015 Artists

The new Pixel Pancho piece in Bushwick is the last mural we cover before we begin our Nuart 2015 coverage in Norway, where Pixel Pancho is also a scheduled artist. Such is the life of the international and traveling Street Artist these days.

This wall is mid-sized in comparison to others he has done for his customary human/robot figures. This wireframed female is looking over her shoulder perhaps, her bottom half swallowed in a botanical swell of blossoms and leaves.

Pixel Pancho for The Bushwick Collective. August 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

BSA Images Of The Week: 08.30.15

August 30, 2015 Artists, BSA Images Of The Week

Dude, Dudette, this is the moment to make the most of Summer before it in subsumed into crazy New York fall. There is so much art on the streets you may not even want to go inside. Actually, if you haven’t seen the China: Through the Looking Glass at the Metropolitan Museum, you have to go – it could blow your mind with all the video and costume and power and history and modern western interpretations of it, sho nuff.

If you wonder what we’ve been up to and what on the near horizon- check out yesterdays posting “Round Up! BSA at NUART, Borås, Coney, BKM, and ON Brooklyn Streets”

Right now Street Artists are beginning to take into account a large pimple on the butt of the US, Mr. Donald Trump. Of course the streets always render opinions in such clever and pointed ways – helping us to cope with a corporate media infotainment machine that can’t help but chase a fire and pour gasoline on it for ratings. Actually NemO’s new mural of a man caught inside a TV-as-guillotine is also apropo.

Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring Adam Cost, Aiko, Clint Mario, DRE, Ernest Zacharevic, Foxx Faces, Hanksy, Hunt, Indie184, Ivanorama, LUDO, Mr. Toll, NemO’s, Overunder, Phlegm, Raphail, She Wolf, Sure We Can, Thiago Goms, and Zed1.

Top image above >>> Ernest Zacharevic sidebusts COST. Overunder looms close by. Please help ID the tags. You may recognize the scene depicted from a very familiar promotional image for Nuart 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

NEMO’S “Stocks – Pillory” (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Hanksy. Clint Mario doesn’t seem to mind the stench from the sack of shit on the street. Not the same with the pedestrian going by. He is covering his nose. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Hunt (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Ivanorama (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Thiago Goms in Barcelona, Spain. (photo © Lluis Olive Bulbena)

LUDO for The Bushwick Collective. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

DRE – The Secret Society of Super Villain Artists (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Raphail (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Stikki Peaches and a pinch of Dain for taste. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Mr. Toll (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Indie184 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Sure We Can (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Foxx Faces (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Aiko for The Bushwick Collective (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Phlegm (photo © Jaime Rojo)

She Wolf (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Zed1 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Untitled. Times Square. Manhattan, NY. August 2015. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Round Up! BSA at NUART, Borås, Coney, BKM, and ON Brooklyn Streets

August 29, 2015 Artists

BSA is excited to be at the Nuart Festival to celebrate 15 years this week. As we told Katherine Brooks in The Huffington Post yesterday “We’ve always admired their willingness to push past comfort zones and embrace a hybrid of academic programming and a rebellious streak that stays true to graffiti’s roots.”

And if you look at the lineup of artists, speakers, and assorted guests you can see that the quality and intellectual firing of synapis is there again this year.

BSA is doing two events for visiting Street Art fans and academics alike – similar to what we did last year – BSA Film Friday LIVE, with the theme of “Play in the Streets” at the theater downtown (sfkino.no/sfkino/stavanger),

and we’ll be co-hosting with Arrested Motion the panel on “Play” with Martha Cooper, Harmen de Hoop, and Bortusk Leer all showing us how they approach the topic of “play” in the public sphere through their work.

Also participating in the seminar portion of the days events will be Pedro Soares Neves (Founder, Lisbon Street Art and Urban Creativity), Xavi Ballaz (Founder, OpenWalls Barcelona), Eirik Sjåholm Knudsen (Norwegian School of Economics) and Marcus Willcocks (Research Fellow, University of the Arts London/Graffolution) all addressing “The academic invasion of street art”.

Day 1 will feature an impressive roster as well – co-hosted by Juxtapoz and VNA – discussing institutions and DIY culture with Henriette Roued-Cunliffe (Assistant Professor at the Royal School of Library and Information Science, University of Copenhagen), Geir Haraldseth (Director, Rogaland Kunstsenter), Eva González-Sancho (Curator, Oslo Pilot) and the artist Julien de Casabianca of Outings Project. Carlo McCormick will talk with Jamie Reid (!), and Evan Pricco teams up with artists Futura and Ernest Zacharevic.

See the full list of artists and special guests and events at http://www.nuartfestival.no/artists/2015 and we’ll of course be keeping you in the action first hand all week.

Thank You for Coming Last Week to Coney Island Museum!

We had a stupendous time meeting you and talking about a handful of artists we have “On The Radar” last weekend at the beach – yes Brooklyn has a beach and it is as clean and as dirty as you imagine. We had a blast and were really pleased to be invited by Jeffrey Deitch, who has curated the 30+ wall show currently on view along with cool DJs and performers all summer at Coney Art Walls. Thanks to everyone, including the dudes on impressive choppers who roared in next door and made us act tough and swear a lot.

BKM-BSA Street Art Tour Was Hot, Humid, Cool

We had a stupendous time leading a tour for @brooklynmuseum members on the 22nd – Thanks to everyone for coming out! ‪

We don’t really do the tour thing much – once a year or two – but smart engaged curious folks from many perspectives like these make it a pure joy – and widen our own understanding about this amazing time in the realms of public space and artistic expression. Thanks for inviting us, for seeing the value of art in the streets and for this opportunity Brooklyn Museum, Sharon Matt Atkins, and Lauren Zelaya.

Coming Up Next

BSA in Sweden with No Limit Borås

And you’ll be coming with us to check out year number two of this festival organized by artist Shai Dahan.

BSA at the Brooklyn Museum On Stage with FAILE

September 24, 2015, 7:00 p.m.
Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Auditorium, 3rd Floor

Join FAILE artists Patrick McNeil and Patrick Miller for an in-depth conversation with Brooklyn Street Art founders Steven P. Harrington and Jaime Rojo. The artists explore their evolution from stenciling and wheat-pasting collages made from found imagery to their most ambitious work, Temple and The FAILE & BÄST Deluxx Fluxx Arcade. Book launch and reception to follow.

Thank you everyone for your support. We really appreciate it.

The Weird World of the Weird Crew in BK

August 29, 2015 Artists

Things are looking weird in Brooklyn at the moment thanks to Cone, Dxtr, Hrvb, Look, and Vidam.

The Berlin based crew are in town for their show at Exit Room that opened last night and as soon as they hit the streets they also knocked out this wall in BK. A collective of 5 individually talented character-based painters and illustrators, the pop-comic-zine-tattoo-ink-skater influences all have an interplay in their various collaborations. Here is the latest in the warped vision of the Weird Crew.

The Weird. CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE (photo © Jaime Rojo)

The Weird (photo © Jaime Rojo)

The Weird exhibition “Weird World” is now open to the public at Exit Room Gallery. Click HERE for information.

BSA Film Friday: 08.28.15

August 28, 2015 Artists

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

Now screening :

1. Lilith and Olaf at Nuart ’15 by Ella & Pitr
2. Come Enjoy the Wonderful World of Dismaland!
3. Wall Therapy 2015: Eder Muniz
4. Wall Therapy 2015: Handiedan

BSA Special Feature: Lilith and Olaf at Nuart ’15 by Ella & Pitr

Straight from Nuart 2015 to you, a possibly world record breaking outdoor figurative mural! It could be the largest one ever!

Completed in Klepp, Rogaland, in only four days this week, French artists Ella & Pitr and an “army of volunteers” covered 21,000m2 on Block Berge Bygg’s roof with their original composition entitled Lilith and Olaf. For you non-Norwegians, King Olaf 1 ruled for the final five years of the first millenium. Olaf Tryggvason gets a comparatively small role in this mural – as if he is a toy dropped from Lilith’s hand as she slumbers here on the roof.

This project was completed so freshly that we only have this silent drone footage for you right now. We’re sure there will be a finished video of this in the future and actually BSA will be able to inspect this in person in a couple of days as we travel to Nuart 2015 so we’ll let you know just how big it is.

The mural will be officially ‘opened’ by the Mayor of Klepp, Ane Mari Braut Nese, next Friday at 4, which means we will still have time to bring her back to see our BSA FILM FRIDAY LIVE at the theater in downtown Stavanger. Hope you can come too!

Come Enjoy the Wonderful World of Dismaland!

If this doesn’t send the whole family running for the mini-van then you are not a true believer in the Magic Thingdom. See our review of this heavy-hitting satirical art installation just opened : The Wonderfully Dismal Kingdom of Banksy.

Wall Therapy 2015: Eder Muniz

All you gotta do is check out this dude dancing while he works to appreciate how much he loves to paint and where the joy comes from.

Wall Therapy 2015: Handiedan

Handiedan was the first muralist this year, and one of the most eclectic. Her distinctive cut collages of currency and curvaceous beauties in her fine art is translated in wheatpaste across the facade of this Rochester former church.

Poetry, Prose and Witty Texting: The Conversation on The Street

August 27, 2015 Artists

“True poetry cares nothing for poems” says Raoul Vaneigem, the Belgium Situationist who taught us that we are creating our lives twenty-four hours a day, in his book “The Revolution of Everyday Life.” The act of living is a certain poetry in itself, we have decided.

When an artist is acting of his or her own industry, they will think, will consider their choice of written words on the street. Poetry or prose; full stanza, furtive phrase, stalwart screed – the message is not incidental if it has made it into the public space for a theater of many possible audiences.

Over time you will see these hand rendered, scrawled, sprayed, paint-brushed text-based missives as diary entries. Not all are profound, and many are perplexing or maddeningly cryptic or coy. Others are statements of conviction or punch lines. Lucky you on the day the sentiment hits you in the funny bone, hits closer to the heart, or reveals a truth. Perhaps you’ll be inspired to add your own entry in response to, or in spite of this conversation on the street.

The Wonderfully Dismal Kingdom of Banksy

August 26, 2015 Artists

Banksy has ventured into the entertaining resort business. One that would possibly be your last resort.

A scathing social and political critique of any number of targets that routinely come under the purview of this artist/curator/commentator/showman, this big tent brings everyone inside for a beating. Rampant capitalism, civic hypocrisy, the war industry, advertising deceit, an encroaching police state, environmental destruction, the widening gap in social equality, xenophobia with its inherent racism, and our insatiable penchant for sunny denial are a partial list of woes addressed. If you don’t feel sickened or guilty after visiting Dismaland perhaps you could affect a certain smugness that says, “Finally, someone is talking about all of these important issues that I’ve been going on about.”

Cheerfully cynical and sarcastic, this magic kingdom is most successful when you are challenged to reconsider a behavior or position – and with 50 or so invited co-exhibitionists, some whose bodies of work are substantial on their own, Banksy clearly intends to challenge you and indict you with a relentless barrage of over-the-top funhouse symbolism and metaphor. If, for example, you are enthralled by those American right-wing Christian Halloween “Hell House” installations that feature pregnant teen girls in stirrups and sallow-faced gay HIV-positive patients in hospital beds you’ll cherish the harrowing Banksy path to salvation. Alas, there may be no salvation, sorry.

Here you can see bright yellow bathtub ducks swimming in an oil spill, there you can play paparazzi with the other flashing bulbs recording Cinderalla’s overturned carriage crash. Next, get a load of the toy boats dangerously overloaded with refugees and the knife-wielding butcher eye-balling the horses he’s riding with on the merry-go-round. If Disneyland clobbers you with candy-covered bromides and implausibly rosy fantasy, Dismaland brings you to the edge of the abyss of man’s folly and gently nudges you to fall into it. Or jump.

Particularly effective to the experience are the grim and listless personnel who mind the grounds and offer no clear or meaningful help. Not quite menacing, they could just be impersonating sullen teens. Perhaps they are buckling under the weight of low wages and dim opportunities on the horizon or are simply humiliated by the balloons some are made to carry that say, “I’m an Imbecil”.

On a particularly gray and dreary day periodically warmed with the sun, the photographer named Butterfly made her pilgrimage to this nightmare fairy tale by the seaside for the big opening and below she shares with BSA readers her images and observations on the pop-up exhibition to help us all feel a bit of the dreadful experience first-hand.

~ By Butterfly

Weston-Super-Mare is a British seaside town, 30 minutes from Bristol, where families spend the day out donkey riding, visiting the Seaquarium or trying arcades at the Pier while kids build sandcastles on a muddy beach in miserable weather.

Rumors had been circulating for weeks about big installations being built in the former Tropicana, a derelict lido closed since 2000 which once hosted the biggest outdoor swimming pool in Europe. The rumblings and the build up to the announcement to the show was phenomenal, along with the conjecture: Is it a film set? Is it a show? Is it a fair? Is it art?

Finally we know: This is Banksy’s biggest show to date: Dismaland. It is, according to promotional materials “is a festival of art, amusements and entry-level anarchism.”

Moving towards Contemporary Art, the show is billed as a ‘Bemusement Park’. The global scale, diversity of installations, artworks and participating artists is unprecedented with 50 contemporary artists from 17 countries aiming to exhibit contemporary art and raise discussion about consumerism, political and environmental issues and to spur people to take action.

1000 lucky local people were invited to experience Dismaland before its’ opening to the general public. Concurrently the online ticket sales failed miserably, with the website crashing all day and earning it the award of ‘the most disappointing new website’.

We first enter the premises through a cardboard security control room built by Bill Barminksi where the security staff asks the most random questions. After the clearing security, doors open to a sinister derelict place with trash, paper on the floor and mud. It almost looks like a dump. The surrounding staff members are dressed in pink hi-vis (vests) and are looking bored, miserable and haggard. Some are holding David Shrigley’s ‘I’m an Imbecile’ balloons. When asking questions, they respond by whispering messages that are beyond understanding. Customer service is below standard and not responsive at best.

Surrounded by murky water with a dumped riot van that has been transformed into an impromptu water fountain, a decrepit fairy-tale castle ‘shows how it feels to be a real princess’. A sinister scene of a Cinderella pumpkin crash sculpture is lit up by the swarm of paparazzi, with flashing cameras taking photo after photo of the tragic crash scene, echoing Princess Diana’s death. You may also pose with it and have your souvenir photo of the experience.

The amusements are purposely confusing – as they don’t let you win. An ESPO sign reads

‘WINNING IS STRICTLY PROHIBITED’. Arcade fans attempt miserably to score some of the bling necklaces by shooting spray cans, only to realize that they are screwed to the wall.

Some local families were confused with Banksy’s Mediterranean Boat Ride, where the public can drive robotic boats of migrants amongst floating bodies. Kids tried to play on Paul Insect‘s overcrowded sandpit while others were desperately looking for disappearing golf balls on the impossible Mini Gulf course. Families enjoyed rides on the merry-go-round without noticing a butcher sitting next to a hanging horse draining blood with cardboard boxes marked Lasagnes (a nod to a horse food scandal in 2013).

Alongside the rides, contemporary artworks are displayed throughout the site. There is also a large indoor space hosting 3 galleries with a selection of some of the best contemporary art. A circus tent features a freak show of strange animals from Polly Morgan and Dorcas Casey to a unicorn by Damien Hirst and a Banksy animatronic rabbit that makes the magician disappear.

The seaside and funfair themes have been given a certain twist as well: A statue of a woman being attacked by seagulls (Banksy), a giant ice cream cone (Ben Long), a wooden carved horse sculpture (Maskull Lasserre), a beach ball floating above razor sharp knives (Damien Hirst), a seaside painting showing a mother and child playing on the sand unaware of the tsunami of detritus coming toward them (Banksy).

Environmental issues and relationships between human and nature are also highlighted with artworks from Paco Pomet and Josh Keyes. A Banksy killer whale sculpture is jumping out of a toilet peace. Other topics addressed are on war, geopolitics, and the Arab Spring. Artists from Palestine and Israel are displayed side by side. Within the Guerilla Island, the dome presents of series of activist banners from all over the world, including drawings from Iranian cartoonist Mana Neyestani.

A bus turned into a touring Museum of Cruel Objects curated by Dr. Gavin Grindon educates the public on surveying the role of design for social control, including CCTV. And you can sign up to one of the union stalls for action. Finally there is the mind-blowing model village installation by James Cauty called The Aftermath Dislocation Principle.

The evening turned into a big party with live music while a massive show of fireworks sealed the official opening. I found the experience to be overwhelming with so much artwork to discover and actions to be taken.

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