NUART FESTIVAL 2012 . STAVANGER NORWAY

This year I am honored to participate in the 2012 NuART festival in Stavanger Norway. Over the past 11 years, NuArt has brought an international hit list of Urban Artists to a relatively small Norwegian town on the western coast. After some initial issues with the artists very public murals, the city has embraced the festival which has left the town with countless public murals and artworks. This year I will join a roster of artists in Stavanger where I will do a small street project, create a small site specific artwork, and teach classes with the local art college for a week. What I am most excited about is the opportunity to speak to an audience for a full 45 minutes at the beginning of the festival program. In this talk, loosely title "Interrogating Utopia: Conscientious Curation of our Shared Public Spaces", I will try to illuminate the reasons for a public to consciously curate its own public spaces and in doing so highlight some of the problematic barriers that outdoor advertising puts up against this effort. As more information becomes available I will post it here but take a look at the NuART website for a full list of participating artists and schedule. [HERE] Now in its 12th ground-breaking year, Nuart 2012 - the annual contemporary street and urban art festival based in Stavanger, Norway –is set to be the biggest yet. An invited international team of street artists will take to the streets of Stavanger from September 20 – with an indoor show running at Tou Scene from 29 September to 19 November. The likes of Ron English and Ben Eine will leave their mark on the city's walls, both indoor and out, creating one of Europe's most dynamic and constantly evolving public art events. Known as ‘the Cannes’ festival of street art, Nuart’s works are exposed to over 100 000 people each week – including some of the most talented, insightful and connected individuals in the urban art world. 2012 sees the event set to attract record numbers as the festival begins to go global, with the additional Nuart Plus summit – running from 27-29 September – bringing global professionals and experts in the field together to discuss and explore this un-stoppable movement in contemporary art.

From the billboard hijacking activism of Ron English (US) and Jordan Seiler (US) to The Wa’s (FR) playful urban interventions, from Saber’s (US) uncompromising stance on the positive power of Graffiti to Aakash Nihalani’s (US) more concise and conceptual use of coloured tape, Nuart 2012 has brought together an unlikely group of “festival” artists, whose diverse work and methods offer an authentic reflection on the real practice of Street Art. The UK’s globetrotting, ‘Obama gift-giving’, Eine and LA’s HowNosm are sure to set the standard for large breathtaking murals, whilst Dolk – Norway’s finest exponent of the genre popularised by Banksy – will produce some of his iconic stencil-work. Alongside the character driven graffiti of Sickboy (UK), the calligraphiti of Amsterdam’s Niels Shoe Meulman and the text driven Mobstr (UK), Nuart is set to create an explosion of - ‘mostly legal’ - works, both inside, and out. Nuart 2012 sees a conscious shift away from the “acceptable” face of Street Art that has become favoured by councils and municipalities around the world. Recognising that there is a danger of this vibrant culture becoming sanitised by a surfeit of oversized legal murals Nuart 2012 will continue to take to the streets in new and more illicit ways. Alongside it’s exhibition at Tou Scene – which will host over half a kilometre of works along its 19th century tunnels – outdoor landmarks and un-missable billboards will be re-envisioned as subversive pieces of striking art. And if this isn’t enough to excite you, sister festival Numusic will be providing the weekend’s entertainment, with the likes of Mad Professor, The Orb, Lindstrøm, and many more performing. Nuart is set to break more than just boundaries in 2012 – will you be there?

More at the NuART website [HERE]