All posts tagged: Martin Whatson

BSA Images Of The Week: 05.28.17

May 28, 2017 Artists

Trump thought he could lift his poll numbers or legitimacy or at least his personal wealth by taking a world tour this week where he sold $100 billion in arms to Saudia Arabia, scored $100 million for his daughters brand new women’s fund, appeared to curtsy to the king, stuffed an electoral map in the Western Wall, volunteered that Israel did not give him intelligence that he gave to Russians in the Oval Office, depressed the Pope, irked his wife, shoved the leader of Montenegro to get to the head of the line, was ambush handshook by the new president of France, told the Germans they were very very bad…. can he please stop now? This drip, drip, drip of rotten embarrassing news is driving everyone crazy. Please please don’t start a war. Now his son-in-law is being invited for some interviews with the FBI?

Meanwhile, New York is getting clobbered by rain and new Street Art and murals and is electrified with the excitement of the beginning of summer. Coney Island, Bushwick, Little Italy are hot for new stuff going up again, David Choe is at the Houston Wall this week, the Bushwick Collective Block Party is June 3, and Ad Hoc’s Welling Court begins June 10.

Here’s our weekly interview with the streets, this week featuring: Alice Pasquini, Baron Von Fancy, Blanco, City Kitty, Crash, Drsc0, Erosie, Jim Drain, Jorit Agoch, kaNO, Martin Whatson, Nick Walker, Pear, Rocket 01, Serge Lowrider, and Tod Seelie.

Top image: Kano. Detail. The L.I.S.A. Project NYC. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Kano for The L.I.S.A. Project NYC. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Jim Drain for Coney Art Walls 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Jorit Agoch portrait of Brazilian twins and artists Os Gemeos. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Unidentified artist on the streets of Berlin. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

City Kitty (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Unidentified artist on the streets of Berlin. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Serge Lowrider for Urban Nation Museum For Urban Contemporar Art. PM/12 “What In The World” Berlin. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Unidentified artist on the streets of Berlin. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Nick Walker (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Unidentified artist on the streets of Berlin. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Rocket 01 for Urban Nation Museum For Urban Contemporary Art “One Wall Project” in Berlin. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Blanco (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Blanco. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

“As Estha stirred the thick jam he thought Two Thoughts and the Two Thoughts he thought were these:
a) Anything can happen to anyone.
and
b) It is best to be prepared.”
― Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things

Among other things. Baron Von Fancy (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Collaboration between CRASH and Nick Walker. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Erosie for Urban Nation Museum For Urban Contemporar Art. PM/12 “What In The World” Berlin. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

“Moloch is the Biblical name relating to a Canaanite god associated with child sacrifice. The name of this deity is also sometimes spelled Molech, Milcom, or Malcam.” We wonder whose children Moloch would sacrifice in this premonition from an unidentified artist on the streets of NYC. Yours? (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Alice Pasquini in Berlin. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Unidentified artist on the streets of NYC. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Martin Whatson for Urban Nation Museum For Urban Contemporary Art. Berlin. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Pear. Or, in this case, Richie’s pear next to Fabco’s shoes. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Tod Seelie for Art in Ad Places. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Drsc0 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Untitled. Coney Island, NY. May 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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)

M-City. Nuart Aberdeen 2017. Aberdeen, Scotland. April 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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

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

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

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.

BSA Images OF The Week: Nuart Aberdeen Edition

April 16, 2017 Artists, BSA Images Of The Week

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.

And they don’t stop. Herakut . Alterego. Nuart Aberdeen 2017. Aberdeen, Scotland. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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.

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

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

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

Martin Whatson. Detail. Art tour goers admire the art. Nuart Aberdeen 2017. Aberdeen, Scotland. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Jet Pack Dinosaur. Aberdeen, Scotland. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Unidentified artist sending some love. Aberdeen, Scotland. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Alice Pasquini. Nuart Aberdeen 2017. Aberdeen, Scotland. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Tags. Aberdeen, Scotland. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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

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

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

Unidentified Artist . Brooklyn, NYC. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

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

Tours, Films, & Fight Night : Nuart x Aberdeen x BSA Dispatch 3

April 15, 2017 Artists

“I have two questions,” said one smartly sweatered and coiffed lady of a certain age. She had grabbed an elbow as we waded through the 350-person tour that we were leading through Aberdeen streets with Jon Reid. “Who gave you all permission to paint your pictures on these walls?” she asked. “And number two: When and where did this whole movement begin?”

Martin Whatson (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Those seemed like relatively easy to answer questions, and they would have been if a small blue car didn’t start honking it’s little insistent horn at us, seeing as we were standing in the middle of the road with Mrs. Siddens. As it turns out, Mrs. Siddens didn’t just have two questions. She had 162.

But that is to be expected here in Aberdeen right now as Nuart has more or less popped open the magic Street Art lamp and the lively spirits are swirling up Jopps Lane camera-in-hand behind parking lots and mechanic shops, and other streets that locals rarely explore.

So here’s an aspect of the scene that we don’t interact with too much – the completely gob-smacked art fan who can’t believe their luck to be regaled with new art and artists. The big cities that have a history with graffiti and, later, street art – or just the plastic arts in general, are often blasé when encountering a new addition to the street, so easily spoiled us humans are.

Jaune. Need we say more? (photo © Jaime Rojo)

But here in Aberdeen – today it looked like there had been such a pent-up desire for any kind of public visual expression of art in the streets that it erupted inside the bottle and verily foamed and frothed out to these historied brick streets.– Like a top secret camera-armed terrorist cell suddenly activated; old, young, entire families… all fanned out across the streets to capture hundreds, thousands of images of M-City and Jaune and Nipper and Alice Mirachi and Martin Whatson and all of the crew.

Okay terrorist analogies are ham-handed, but its just like that!

Jaune (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Our BSA Film Friday LIVE event at the Belmont Filmhouse was a lot of fun, with engaged and aghast reactions to art interventions by artists like Kut Collective, Akay, and Vhils. Hawaiian born artist Hula’s portraits painted on ice rafts in the melting arctic cap amongst the Inuit people was the one that actually elicited gasps, with at least one woman crying.

Also Street Artist Fintan Magee left his wall early to come to the show and be our special guest presenter of his video about his mural made during his time with Syrian children who were confined to refugee camps in Amman, Jordan recently.

Add Fuel at work. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Also, have we mentioned the Fight Night? A Nuart tradition worth preserving, with artists and experts of all ilks convening as small teams on the stage to debate two sides of an issue. Friday night in the “Underground”, a basement pub with wood and soldiered steel stools and deliberately dark lighting, the assembled clump of fans Street Art and beer gathered around the stage to hear a debate that pitted large murals against small interventions.

Among the sparring, personal insults, laughter, and flashes of Juanes leg’s vexing and tantalizing the crowd beneath his new his new plaid kilt, somehow the female panelists on each team landed some of the strongest arguments. – Alice Pasquini for the small interventions and Jasmine from Herakut presented thoughtful reasoned rationale while the men bandied about jokes referring to size and an inexplicable reference to baby pandas by Evan Pricco turned into a running joke. Ultimately, the “small interventions” team prevailed by the thinnest of margins over large murals in during the final audience vote.

Isaac Cordal (photo © Jaime Rojo)

So the panel discussions, on-stage interviews with artists, kids programs, tours and movie screenings continue today, with us introducing the debut of “Saving Banksy” and Nuart’s James Finucane introducing the 2011 mini-doc about Nuart and it’s early beginnings.

In an exciting development, there are some surprise Street Art pieces going up in the areas that the new formal interventions are going, suggesting that a seeding of the soil is producing local fruit. It is spring after all. Time for a renewal. Slàinte mhath!

Isaac Cordal (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Alice Pasquini. Process shot. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Alice Pasquini at work. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

This Nipper interactive piece provides all the tools a passerby needs to be a Street. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Nipper an aspiring artist plays with interactive piece. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Nipper (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Herakut. Detail. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

At the Fight Club/Pub Debate last night from left to right. Jasmin from Herakut, Pedro Soares Nieves, Sasha Bogojev, Alice Pasquini, Jaune and Evan Prico debating the merits of large murals vs small scale interventions. Pedro’s team argued in favor of murals and Evan’s team argued in favor of small interventions. (photo © Steven P. Harrington)

Almost 350 people showed up for the first ever street art tour in Aberdeen battling cold, rain and hail, sun and clowds all at once!. Here they admired the piece by Martin Whatson. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

The crowds in front of Fintan Magee’s work in progress. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

The crowds in front of M-City’s mural. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

These intrepid art lovers who lasted throughout the entire tour were such troupers and they stood at the last mural by Add Fuel in the background braving the intense cold rain falling on them. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Nuart X Aberdeen x BSA: Dispatch 1

April 13, 2017 Artists

This white and grey skurry appears rather plump as he waddles across the stone road in Aberdeen toward the cherry picker that holds Jasmine from Herakut aloft as she paints the new piece on the concave wall. Skurry is the Doric term for seagull, and Doric is a dialect of the North East of Scotland that thrives principally here in this seaside oil city of 230,000, so you’ll hear a few terms creeping into the sentences here and there.

Jaune plays with Elki Stencils’ Piper painted 13 ago in Aberdeen, Scotland. Nuart Aberdeen. April 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

There are plenty of skurries flying above and cawing and milling about these narrow streets. With their clean feathers and portly dispositions they are also looking a lot like a Sunday dinner, bellies round from a hearty diet of shellfish and other small sea creatures – and Doritos, according to a humorous story of theft you’ll hear here over a tall beer in a dark bar.

We’ve just arrived and it’s a cold and windy Passover/Easter week and nope, no bagpipes or kilts yet. Well, except for the one punk girl in a kilt-inspired skirt and black boots near Belmont Street walking past the former St Nicholas Congregational Church, now the home of booming nightclubs called Priory and Redemption over the last couple of years.

Jaune at work. Nuart Aberdeen. April 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Elsewhere we found a kilt on one of Street Artist Jaune’s miniature stencil workmen, newly sprayed at the foot of a larger 13 year old stencil of a traditional ‘piper’ by Scottish Street Artist Elki, who now does a lot of studio stencil work in Glasgow. This fresh collaboration is a metaphor for what is happening here with Nuart Aberdeen this week, say a number of the local art scenesters, including artist Jon Reid, who is touring us around on foot with his friend Justine and Evan Pricco from Juxtapoz.

Jon peppers his tour with plenty of local history and pointed commentary as we head up Castle Street (well named), past the Salvation Army citadel, glancing at the old clock tower, the courthouse tower, the Tolbooth Museum in a 17th century former jail with steep spiral staircases and tales of crime and punishment.

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

He looks at the old Elki stencil of the bagpiper and says that its one of those Street Art pieces that somehow is taken care of, despite the rules of ephemerality one usually expects in the urban art game. “They’ve always preserved this one. There’ve been tags and stuff around it and you can see where its been whitewashed but they’ve always preserved it.”

For Jon, a tall young guy with a beard and strong voice who has been following and advocating the local art scene with his blog “Dancing in the Dark” for a number of years, seeing this new addition of Jaune’s signature workmen is a meaningful development, symbolic for the local artists scene and to street culture here. And Nuart is a part of it.

Hera from Herakut at work. Nuart Aberdeen. April 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

“Seeing it makes me quite proud, to see that Aberdeen has got this festival up and that people are embracing it – everybody can take something from it, the artists and yourselves and the local people,” he says as we walk a few more meters past the a large billboard that will be new Robert Montgomery piece for Nuart Aberdeen.

Only two words from the upcoming missive are visible so far, written in white block font on the upper left corner of the black rectangle.

“Modernism Modernism”

Perhaps this is a most apt description for a this new festival that is inserting fresh artistic voices among the winding streets and the historic buildings of Aberdeen. Sort of like these teens you watch doing hardcore BMX bike tricks despite the cold April winds blowing here across the fortified base of the yet another ornate Flemish-Gothic granite behemoth from hundreds of years ago. The tricks and energy of the new generation brings the site alive on the street, startling and relevant in these raucous moments of change and upheaval.

Herakut. Process shot. Nuart Aberdeen April 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Julien De Casabianca. Nuart Aberdeen April 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Alice Pasquini. Nuart Aberdeen April 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Nipper. Detail. Nuart Aberdeen April 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Nipper. Nuart Aberdeen April 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Martin Whatson. Detail. Nuart Aberdeen April 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

M-City. Process Shot. Nuart Aberdeen April 2017. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Nuart Aberdeen 2017: Full Roster of Artists Confirmed

March 2, 2017 Artists

And then there were 11.

With yesterday’s official announcement that Norwegian artist Martin Whatson and Belgian artist Jaune will be participating this April at NUART / Aberdeen the full line up of artists has been announced. It’s 11 international artists from 10 different countries, sort of like a New York melting pot in Scotland over Easter Weekend. Nuart Aberdeen 2017, it’s on, and we’ll be there with you.

Here are some highlights of each artist courtesy the folks at Nuart.

“Leading the line up for Nuart Aberdeen is Scottish-born artist and Venice Biennale participant Robert Montgomery, whose text-based artworks come in the form of light installations, murals and temporary paste-ups.“

Image courtesy of Nuart

Julien de Casabianca is founder of the global participatory art initiative Outings project, which embellishes the streets with portraits plucked from classical paintings. He’ll be raiding the archives and liberating characters from the prestigious collection of Aberdeen Art Gallery.

From BSA:

Julien De Casabianca, Angry Gods, and Hacking Disaster in Kathmandu

Image courtesy of Nuart

“Jasmin Siddiqui and Falk Lehmann AKA HERAKUT will be making the trip to Scotland. Widely regarded as leading lights of the global street art movement, we can’t wait to see what these two get up to in The Granite City!”

From BSA:

Herakut In Paris With A Message for the Kids About Magic

Image courtesy of Nuart

“Portugese visual artist and illustrator Add Fuel is known for producing optical illusions with painstaking attention to detail, Add Fuel’s interventions hint at the history and heritage that lies beneath our cities. We couldn’t think of anyone better to dig below the surface of The Granite City!”

Image courtesy of Nuart

“Transferring his participatory art project, Mission Directives, from Stavanger to Aberdeen this Spring is Bergen-based artist Nipper. Through utopian ideals of sharing, creativity and citizen-led communication in public space, Mission Directives questions who has the power and authority to communicate messages and create meaning in our shared spaces.”

Image courtesy of Nuart

“Born in 1985 in Lismore, Australia but of Scottish descent, Fintan Magee is considered one of the world’s leading figurative street artists. Following his blockbuster ‘rorschach’ inspired mural for Nuart Festival 2016 we can’t wait to see what Fintan has up his sleeve for Nuart Aberdeen!“

From BSA:

Fintan Magee in Rome and Rising Tides Around Your Knees

Image courtesy of Nuart

“M-City is an artist and lecturer at the Academy of Art in Szczecin, Poland. A long-time collaborator of Nuart, M-City is best-known for his large-scale, industrial-themed murals, which involve piecing together hundreds of carefully cut stencils to create a coherent imagined cityscape. Always a joy to work with and guaranteed never to disappoint, we can’t wait to let him loose on Aberdeen’s walls!”

From BSA:

M-City Meets the Commercial Buff in Mexico City

Image courtesy of Nuart

“Alice Pasquini is a multimedia artist from Rome whose affectionate street art explores the brighter side of human relationships. Encompassing murals, paintings, and illustrations which tell stories about various acts of kindness and love, Pasquini leads a new breed of female street artist bringing some much-needed femininity to our public spaces.”

From BSA:

Australian Italian Museum Honors Immigration With Alice Pasquini Mural on Façade

Image courtesy of Nuart

“Leading our penultimate artist announcement is Spanish sculptor and interventionist Isaac Cordal, whose small-scale installations capture the humour and absurdity of human existence. At just 25cm tall and hidden in multiple locations throughout the city, little by little Cordal’s characters transform the urban environment in its natural habitat.”

From BSA:

Nuart Day 1: Isaac Cordal Installs His Preoccupied Little Businessmen

Social Isolation, Isaac Cordal, and Neighbors (Sasiedzi) in Łódź

Massive Installation by Isaac Cordal in Nantes “Follow The Leaders”

JAUNE

“Celebrating the unsung heroes of our everyday lives is Jaune, a stencil artist and urban interventionist from Brussels. Sanitation workers (Jaune’s ex-profession) are the protagonists in his humorous installations and paintings, which playfully draw on the paradox between the visible and the invisible in our cities. Jaune’s participation comes courtesy of our good friends at The Crystal Ship festival in Ostend, Belgium.“

Martin Whatson

Image courtesy of Nuart

“Completing this year’s artist line-up is a Nuart favourite and one of Norway’s leading stencil artists, Martin Whatson. Cleverly combining the aesthetics of abstract graffiti and stencil art, Martin Whatson’s distinctive urban scenes have brought him worldwide acclaim and an international band of fans and followers. We are greatly looking forward to seeing how he responds to the unique environment of Aberdeen!“

For more info go to:

Website: http://www.nuartaberdeen.co.uk/

Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/nuartaberdeen

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/nuartaberdeen

Two Miami Schools Enveloped in Murals : The RAW Project in Wynwood

January 24, 2017 Artists

Reimagining Art in Wynwood: The RAW Project.

The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) received $148 million in 2016. The war budget, also called the “Defense Budget”, was approved for $582 billion for this year.

For comparison’s sake, that means the “Defense Budget” is 3,900 times the size of the NEA.

Paola Delfin at work on her mural at The Eneida M. Hartner elementary school. Wynwood, Miami. 2016 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Arts and artists get very little or no financial or institutional support from the federal, state, or local government in the United States, which is always a shock for Europeans to learn – and many won’t believe it when you tell them. This website, for example, receives no funding or grants from any organization despite publishing daily for almost nine years, and it has remained non-commercial during that entire time.

Paola Delfin with some fans. Eneida M. Hartner elementary school. Wynwood, Miami. 2016 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

It may be getting even worse for the arts in the US now that the new Trump administration in Washington is proposing cutting all funding from the National Endowment for the Arts. Arts and music programs in many American schools have already been eliminated slowly but surely over the last 40 years since the beginning of trickle-down economics in the 1980s.

That is why it is rather astounding that two of Miami’s Wynwood schools, Eneida M. Hartner elementary school and Jose De Diego middle school, are completely covered in murals.

Mr. June. Eneida M. Hartner elementary school. Wynwood, Miami. 2016 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

The Raw Project in Wynwood, Miami is the initiative of Robert De Los Rios, who partnered with private contributors, did fundraising, and asked a coalition of artists to paint the walls of the schools for the kids.

Part of its success of course is due to the status of the Wynwood neighborhood as a magnet for graffiti and Street Artists over the last decade or so. Already coming to Wynwood for Art Basel or to partake in a related art event, these artists have given of themselves and their talents to create a completely unique and dynamic environment for students to learn and grow up around.

Zed1. Eneida M. Hartner elementary school. Wynwood, Miami. 2016 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

We captured a number of these walls during successive visits over the last few years and share them with BSA readers today.

Please consider donating to the school organization to continue this program and to refresh or replace murals as they age. http://www.projectwynwood.com/raw/

Martin Whatson. Eneida M. Hartner elementary school. Wynwood, Miami. 2016 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Shepard Fairey. Eneida M. Hartner elementary school. Wynwood, Miami. 2016 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

2501. Eneida M. Hartner elementary school. Wynwood, Miami. 2016 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

INO at work on his mural at The Eneida M. Hartner elementary school. Wynwood, Miami. 2016 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

INO. Eneida M. Hartner elementary school. Wynwood, Miami. 2016 (photo © INO)

Kevin Ludo at work on his mural at The Eneida M. Hartner elementary school. Wynwood, Miami. 2016 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Kevin Ludo. Eneida M. Hartner elementary school. Wynwood, Miami. 2016 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Louis Masai at work on his mural at The Eneida M. Hartner elementary school. Wynwood, Miami. 2016 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Louis Masai. The Eneida M. Hartner elementary school. Wynwood, Miami. 2016 (photo © Emil Walker)

Dan Witz. Eneida M. Hartner elementary school. Wynwood, Miami. 2016 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Pip Squeak. Eneida M. Hartner elementary school. Wynwood, Miami. 2016 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Axel Rod. Jose De Diego middle school. Wynwood, Miami. 2014 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Bik Ismo. Jose De Diego middle school. Wynwood, Miami. 2014 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Findac. Jose De Diego middle school. Wynwood, Miami. 2014 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

D*Face on the left with Pixel Pancho on the right. Jose De Diego middle school. Wynwood, Miami. 2014 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

MTO. Jose De Diego middle school. Wynwood, Miami. 2014 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Paola Delfin. Jose De Diego middle school. Wynwood, Miami. 2014 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Spencer Keeton Cunnigham. Jose De Diego middle school. Wynwood, Miami. 2014 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Word To Mother. Jose De Diego middle school. Wynwood, Miami. 2014 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Pastel. Jose De Diego middle school. Wynwood, Miami. 2014 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Jose Mertz . Lister. Jose De Diego middle school. Wynwood, Miami. 2014 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Looks like the kids at the Jose De Diego middle school are being inspired by the art of Ben Eine. Wynwood, Miami. 2014 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Martin Whatson. Jose De Diego middle school. Wynwood, Miami. 2014 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Txemy. Jose De Diego middle school. Wynwood, Miami. 2014 (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Miami Basel/Wynwood 2016 Wrap: Parade of Eye-Popping Beauty at a Portentous Time

December 7, 2016 Artists

An embarrassment of riches in so many ways, the Wynwood Street Art and mural scene is outrageously sexy, flashy, ugly, posey, pretty, proliferate and quizzically content-free. The annual outdoor urban art visual carnival that accompanies Art Basel in Miami is full of hi/low expectation and spectacle, and it confidently delivers on both.

1010. Goldman Global Arts. Hard Rock Stadium. Art Basel Miami 2016. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Long-limbed and shimmery sleek women are often working the sidewalks like runways, the men are carefully posing/not posing/posing with open shirts and genial braggadocio, and there are thousands, more likely millions of selfies taken in front of painted walls.

International art fans are mixing with skater kids and hip hop heads and egg-headed social scientists and teenage marching bands and they are all gawking and interacting with loquacious mamacitas and bearded lumbersexuals; this is not your average clambake.

Sometimes it is just weird; flourescence mixed with plaid, shot-callers and violins, strollers and stillettos, an undertone of aggression and sexual tension, salt-of-the-earth with self-admiring clubbers, perfect skin and aerosol painted hands, a whiff of weed and a sense of wonder waiting to be discovered.

Audrey Kawasaki at The Hotel. Goldman Global Arts. South Beach. Art Basel Miami 2016. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

While there was a parade of 40 or so citizens and activists carrying signs and handing out flyers down the street to protest the oil pipelines taking sacred lands from native tribes and polluting natural water supplies, the thousands of art fans flooding the Wynwood neighborhood of Miami would have been hard pressed to find any Street Art talking about those topics.

Ironically the political shockwaves this year in Miami seemed to emanate from behind doors at the fair with Sam Durant’s “End White Supremacy” piece that many interpreted as a direct response to the election of a president whose followers include radical organizations that champion white supremacy. Alas, the piece was made in 2008, and although its hand-style emulates the hit and run scrawl of some graffiti on the street, it was a thoughtfully executed piece constructed as an illuminated sign.

David Choe. Goldman Global Arts. Wynwood Walls. Art Basel Miami 2016. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

With one very notable exception, the enormous and frightful mural featuring Donald Trump as Heath Ledger’s Joker wielding a knife at the neck of the Statue of Liberty with the screaming headline “Come On… What the Hell Do You Have to Lose?” by 12 artists for The Bushwick Collective/Mana Urban Arts Project, the professionalization of Street Artists and their murals may be steering the paintings in Wynwood away from in-your-face activism.

Granted, no one is thinking that commercially branded ventures that actually pay artists to paint will encourage the outright expression of social or political opinions – that may challenge or frighten potential customers and investors. Hotel lobbies need murals, sport cars need decorative painting, beer cans need labels. A number of liquor and lifestyle companies have invited artists here over the last few years and paid them to make their special events and products visually appealing, but little else.

David Choe portrait of Martha Cooper and her cat Mélia. Goldman Global Arts. Wynwood Walls. Art Basel Miami 2016. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

The newly refurbished Hard Rock stadium a few miles north of Miami features huge mural installations by international Street Artists that are curated by Goldman Global Arts, a division of Goldman Properties, the same real estate organization that has brought artists from around the world to the Wynwood Walls compound and featured their fine art canvasses in gallery expositions since the late 2000s. The pieces are opus works in an unusual setting and now sports fans are going to be up close and personal with some of the bigger names in Street Art right now.

It would be hypocritical for anyone to expect that these artists should accept commercial work and yet disrespect guidelines about the content. Similarly, expecting artists not to seek commercial opportunities for fear of “selling out” is arrogant and unrealistic and often the convenient provenance of privileged youth who dabble in “slumming” as a rebellious lifestyle. Later they are bankers.

David Choe. Goldman Global Arts. Wynwood Walls. Art Basel Miami 2016. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Even so, where’s the anger right now? Why didn’t you see a lot of furious diatribes, challenges to power, and mockery of small-minded thinking on the street in Wynwood – and what would it take for Street Art to embrace its power to affect social and political change?

Just posing the question here now, again – as the topics of impending fascism, the increasing acts of racism, anti-Semitism, homophobia, corruption, oligarchy, state-corporatism, and a systematic eroding of respect for our institutions – all came up in conversations at bars, art openings, panel discussions, and roof parties.

Okuda. Goldman Global Arts. Wynwood Walls. Art Basel Miami 2016. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

The murals you see here are often technically superb and their themes, while muted, may address some of the larger themes affecting society, but one wonders if there is an internalized censorship that we have accepted.

These images are admittedly of a modest percentage of the hundreds of legal murals and illegally dashed-off pieces we saw this week, but that’s only because we have edited for our individual aesthetics, not because of content. Also admittedly, as people in the arts, we are exhausted from the recent election and all it portends, and we were happy for some glorious eye candy to salve the psychic wounds – so maybe we were selectively seeing what we wanted to.

Probably not too much though.

For an art practice with some serious and proud roots in activism, the walls in Miami are curiously quiet. But they definitely look amazing.

Pixel Pancho. Goldman Global Arts. Wynwood Walls. Art Basel Miami 2016. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Findac. Goldman Global Arts. Wynwood Walls. Art Basel Miami 2016. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Faith 47. Goldman Global Arts. Wynwood Walls. Art Basel Miami 2016. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Felipe Pantone. Goldman Global Arts. Wynwood Walls. Art Basel Miami 2016. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Martin Whatson. The Raw Project. Eneida M. Hartner Elementary School. Wynwood / Art Basel Miami 2016. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Our week’s coverage on BSA:

Wynwood Awakes: BSA x UN BERLIN ART BASEL 2016: Dispatch 1

Police Arrest in Miami: BSA x UN BERLIN ART BASEL 2016: Dispatch 2

You’ll Need Good Shoes: BSA x UN BERLIN ART BASEL 2016: Dispatch 3

Clubhouse Chemistry in a Warehouse : BSA x UN BERLIN ART BASEL 2016: Dispatch 4

Paint, Protest, Party : BSA x UN BERLIN ART BASEL 2016: Dispatch 5

Urban Contemporary Inside the Fair : BSA x UN BERLIN ART BASEL 2016: Dispatch 6

This article is the result of a collaborative partnership with BSA and Urban Nation (UN).

This article is also published on The Huffington Post.

Never Crew: “Inhuman Barriers” and Cities Of Hope

June 13, 2016 Artists

Manchester in UK hosted a street art convention in May called “Cities of Hope” and 10 international artists worked on pieces that often addressed issues of social justice. Swiss duo Christian Rebecchi and Pablo Togni, who comprise Nevercrew, addressed the theme of immigration and there piece gives a sense of the seemingly impossible odds that many people face when attempting to escape war and persecution in search of a refuge.

brooklyn-street-art-NEVERCREW-Inhuman-barriers-Manchester-Cities-of-Hope-2016-web-2

“We are extremely glad to have been part of this project based on social justice issues and so strongly connected to the city and to its people,” the guys say in reference to the experience painting “Inhuman Barriers.” The two worked in support of the local solidarity group WASP (Women Asylum Seekers Together).

Additional participants in Cities of Hope include Axel Void, C215, Case Maclaim, Faith47, Phlegm, Martin Whatson, Pichi&Avo, Hyuro, and Dale Grimshaw.

BSA “Images of the Year” for 2015 : New Video

December 16, 2015 Artists

Was 2015 the “Year of the Mural”?

A lot of people thought so, and the rise of commercial festivals and commissioned public/private mural programs probably brought more artists to more walls than in recent history. Judging from the In Box, 2016 is going to break more records. Enormous, polished, fully realized and presented, murals can hold a special role in a community and transform a neighborhood, even a city.

But they are not the “organic” Street Art that draws us into the dark in-between places in a city, or at its margins.

We keep our eyes open for the small, one-off, idiosyncratic, uncommissioned, weirdo work as well, as it can carry clues about the culture and reveal a sage or silly solo voice. It also just reinforces the feeling that the street is still home to an autonomous free-for-all of ideas and opinions and wandering passions. For us it is still fascinating to seek out and discover the one-of-a-kind small wheatpastes, stencils, sculptures, ad takeovers, collages, and aerosol sprayed pieces alongside the enormous and detailed paintings that take days to complete.

The main image above is from a vinyl subway advertisement that was high-jacked and we published it in February of this year on our Images of the Week posting. It’s small, personal, and very effective as you can see someone suspiciously similar to Batman is jumping out of the mouth of someone looking awfully similar to Hedwig of “Angry Inch” fame.

Of the 10,000 or so images photographer Jaime Rojo took in 2015, here are a selection 140+ of the best images from his travels through streets looking for unpermissioned and sanctioned art.

Brooklyn Street Art 2015 Images of the Year by Jaime Rojo

Brooklyn Street Art 2015 Images of the Year by Jaime Rojo includes the following artists;

365xlos43, Amanda Marie, Andreas Englund, Augustine Kofie, Bisser, Boijeot, Renauld, Bordaloli, Brittany, BunnyM, Case Maclaim, Casg, Cash4, CDRE, Clet, Cost, Curve, Dain, Dal East, Dan Budnik, Dan Witz, David Walker, DeeDee, Dennis McNett, Don Rimx, Ricardo Cabret, LNY, Alex Seel, Mata Ruda, Don’t Fret, Dot Dot Dot, ECB, El Mac, El Sol25, Ella & Pitr, Eric Simmons, Enest Zacharevic, Martha Cooper, Martin Whatson, Ever, Faile, Faith47, Findac, Futura, Gaia, Gilf!, Hanksy, Hellbent, Hot Tea, How & Nosm, Icy and Sot, Inti, Invader, Isaac Cordal, James Bullough, Janet Dickson, Jef Aerosol, Jilly Ballistic, Joe Iurato, John Fekner, Le Diamantaire, Li Hill, LMNOPI, London Kaye, Low Brow, Marina Capdevilla, Miss Van, Mr. Prvrt, Mr. Toll, Myth, Nafir, Nemos, Never Crew, Nick Walker, Nina Pandolofo, Old Broads, Oldy, Ollio, Os Gemeos, Owen Dippie, Paper Skaters, Pet Bird, Kashink, Smells, Cash4, PichiAvo, Pixel Pancho, QRST, ROA, Ron English, Rubin415, Saner, Sean 9 Lugo, Shai Dahan, Shepard Fairey, Sheryo & The Yok, Sinned, Sipros, Skewville, Slikor, Smells, Sweet Toof, Snowden, Edward Snowden, Andrew Tider, Jeff Greenspan, Specter, Stray Ones, Sweet Toof, Swil, Willow, Swoon, The Outings Project, Toney De Pew, Tristan Eaton, Various & Gould, Vermibus, Wane, Wk Interact

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Please note: All content including images and text are © BrooklynStreetArt.com, unless otherwise noted. We like sharing BSA content for non-commercial purposes as long as you credit the photographer(s) and BSA, include a link to the original article URL and do not remove the photographer’s name from the .jpg file. Otherwise, please refrain from re-posting. Thanks!

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This article is also published on The Huffington Post

BSA Images Of The Week: 09.13.15

September 13, 2015 Artists, BSA Images Of The Week

This Sunday’s Images Of The Week seems to have an overriding theme which wasn’t really planned. It just happened.

A preponderance of stencils, many of them miniature and most placed without permission are here for your consideration. Some of the pieces have been on the walls for years while others are fairly new. After a few days admiring large murals in Norway and Sweden, these little missives are sweet.

Futura also came back to New York from Norway just in time to hit the hallowed Houston Wall yesterday and Martha Cooper is hanging there as well, so you will want to check that out! Martha and John Ahearn just opened their new dual show Thursday called “Kids” at Dorian Gray on the LES, which we thought was dope.

Also in town are Ernest Zacharevic, who will be working on a special project, David Walker has been seen poking his head into things, and Vermibus is popping up here and there on bus shelters with his dissolved portraits. A number of artists and fans are in NYC for the Brotherhood show at Jonathan Levine curated by Yasha Young, and of course Shepard Fairey has his first New York show in five years coming up this week with all new work on exhibition at Jacob Lewis Gallery called “On Our Hands”. As in blood, yo.

Here’s our weekly interview with the street, this week featuring APosse, Dolk, DotDotDot, Dotmasters, Ella & Pitr, Hama Woods, Isaac Cordal, JPS, MIR, Nafir, the Outings Project, Strok, Martin Whatson and TREF.

NUART 2015 Roundup : A Laboratory on the Street

September 12, 2015 Artists

A roundup today for the Nuart street art/ mural festival in Norway with images of the final walls by this years artists. Now celebrating its 15th year, the mid-sized fjord-facing city of Stavanger has played host to a selection of international and local artists directly or indirectly related to the evolving scene we know as Street Art.

Again this year the selection of invited participants is varied, potent, and occasionally a smack upside the head – with punk rock graphic designer Jamie Reid leading the way in spirit and on walls. Reid’s inspiration dates to the radical hippie politics and Situationist practices of the 1950s and 60s but he is best known for formation of the Sex Pistols anti-monarchial slash and burn visual identity and for penning their pivotal recording “Anarchy in the UK” – a history discussed in Carlo McCormick’s presentation during the Nuart Plus program.

In tandem with his paste-ups around town and installation at the formal gallery show was the lesser-known street photography of very-well-known graffiti photographer and ethnographer Martha Cooper, who displayed a selection of five decades of children playing on the streets with improvised toys and games – via an automated slide show – as well as an additional one she narrated during our panel on this year’s theme “Play” at Nuart Plus.

While neither Reid nor Cooper are thought of as Street Artists per se, their choice as participants gave grounding to the proceedings and is emblematic of director Martyn Reed’s holistic approach to an eclectic programming that mixes up the tributaries and the river in such a way that observers may better have tools to measure the creative flow that we are all witnessing on city walls across the globe today.

As we mark the halfway point of this decade and see the institutional discussions of Street Art taking form while academics try to place it in the canon of art-making and decide upon the nature of its impact, they do it with the knowledge that gallery shows, museum exhibitions, high-profile auctions, individual collecting, lifestyle marketers, and public festivals of many configurations and aspirations are already embracing its relevance. No one can possibly gauge this story in all of its complexity but some will capture its spirit. Being on the street helps.

One way to get a pulse on the present is to attend shows like Nuart and witness the diverse stratagems that artists are using to engage their audiences and judge if they are successful at realizing their intentions. With a deliberately mixed bag of thinkers, feelers, documentors, aesthetes, and pranksters culled together for your edification, this show stokes the discussions.

Others may say that the headliners of this year’s Nuart were the French couple Ella & Pitr, whose record-setting 21,000 square meter mural of a young woman in running shorts lying in a semi-fetal position could only be viewed by helicopter across the roofs of a large construction company complex.

You could say that Stavanger streets were commanded with greater effect by the simple addition of Spain’s Isaac Cordal and his handmade concrete (or resin) bald businessmen, fifty or so of which he glued into crevices and upon ledges and structural fissures on buildings throughout town. Their sad existential conundrums are ours, even though we are guilting them with all the corrupt actions we are at least a little complicit in.

Arguably the greatest metamorphosis took place with the collection and assembly of local detritus – broken car pieces, old bicycles, tires, even ship buoys. Before you roll your eyes and think of homey craft-inspired planters on front lawns, the likenesses of animals that Bordalo II can evoke with his sculptures is uncanny and a little spooky.

His “stag” deer is meant as a commentary on the loss of natural habitat of the animals at the hands of what we call “development”. The companion piece of a whale overwhelmed by environmental poisoning in the Tou Scene gallery installation proves equally compelling and tragic.

Harmen de Hoop invited a top economist to perform his installation purely with chalk and a 30-minute lecture on the streets of Stavanger on the subject of option pricing, Dolk bravely experimented with a new abstractionist, reductivist approach that ran counter to the style he is known for, and brothers Icy & Sot were the most currently topical with their portrait of a girl whose distorted visage is that of a refugee boat crammed with people. If Nuart at times feels like a laboratory it may be the perfect analogy for the street experience in cities everywhere.

Have a look at many of the finished walls at Nuart this year. See our essay marking their 15th anniversary HERE.

Pejac did a reinterpretation of “The Scream” by the Norwegian expressionist Edvard Munch, using a toy truck tire on a paint roller. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Bordalo II. The artist preps the wall in the background. Trash collected from near by empty lots sits in the foreground to serve as the raw material for his work. Nuart 2015. Stavanger, Norway. (photo © Jaime Rojo)

Harmen De Hoop “Permanent Education” from NUART

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Please note: All content including images and text are © BrooklynStreetArt.com, unless otherwise noted. We like sharing BSA content for non-commercial purposes as long as you credit the photographer(s) and BSA, include a link to the original article URL and do not remove the photographer’s name from the .jpg file. Otherwise, please refrain from re-posting. Thanks!
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This article is also published on The Huffington Post

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