As the walls continue to speak in the Santurce district of San Juan, Puerto Rico, they have begun to attract increasing attention and admiration from passersby. We even noticed a group of students speaking with Mexican artist, Neuzz. Here are a few images of works in progress by: Sego, also from Mexico, Rimx & the Puerto Rican El Coro collective, Ever from Argentina, and Neuzz from the Carribean’s first international urban arts festival:
Photos by Dani Mozeson
In part 3 of my series of posts about this year’s Nuart Festival (here are parts one and two), I want to highlight some of the less traditional outdoor work at the festival. While mural festivals like Nuart are known for, well, murals, three artists went a different direction for their outdoor contributions to Nuart: The Wa, Jordan Seiler and Aakash Nihalani.
Aakash Nihalani’s work was, as usual for him, tape-based. While it was 2D like a mural and could have theoretically been painted in the same spot with similar results, the tape reinforces the idea that street art is ephemeral. You couldn’t preserve one of his pieces outdoors even if you tried.
The Wa installed a series of small sculptures resembling pools of oil in one of the main squares of downtown Stavanger, with the oil leading a path from the sea (where there is a lot of oil) to the nearest ATM. Again, a temporary intervention, but also a sculptural one. Nuart has had sculptures before, but it’s still not all that common at other, similar, festivals.
Perhaps the most shocking of all were Jordan Seiler’s ad takeovers. He replaced around two dozen public advertisements (two large billboards and the rest bus-stop ads) with his own art. Like Aakash, that’s pretty much Jordan doing what he usually does, but it’s something that not many other mural programs seem likely to embrace, particularly programs like Nuart that get government funding. Nuart’s ballsiness is certainly to be commended. That said, it’s important to note that Jordan did something similar but on a much smaller scale in the early days of Living Walls. Unfortunately, only the large billboards lasted more than about 12 hours. Those bus-stop ad guys are quick.
More photos of work by Jordan Seiler, The Wa and Aakash Nihalani after the jump… Continue reading “Nuart part 3: The odd outdoor bits”
The walls are talking in Puerto Rico, as over a dozen first-rate artists are busy gracing the walls of the Santurce district of San Juan. Organized by local artists Celso Gonzalez and Alexis Diaz of La Pandilla, along with Emil Medina of Buena Vibra, “Los Muros Hablan” marks the Carribean’s largest urban arts festival. Not only are we seeing some of our favorite artists at work, but we are also meeting many whose works is new to us. Here are just a few images we took today — many more to come:
Sponsored by Coor Light, “Los Muros Hablan” continues through the 14th.
Photos of Roa by Lois Stavsky; photo of Aryz by Dani Mozeson and of Bik-Ismo by Lenny Collado
Here’s part two of our FAME Festival mural coverage, thanks to Henrik Haven and his photos. Part one can be found here. In a two-part series, we’ve selected some of our favorite pieces from FAME 2012. For part two, we’ve got walls by Conor Harrington, Lucy McLauchlan, Cyop & Kaf, MOMO, Boris Hoppek and Bastardilla.
Continue reading “Murals from FAME Festival 2012, part two”
In my second post about Nuart 2012 (part one here) I’ve finally got some finished pieces to show. While Nuart is known for the outdoor work that they organized, the artists probably spend just as much time, some of them more, on the indoor installation component of the festival. This year, work was installed in a series of old beer halls at Tou Scene, a venue in Stavanger that Nuart has used a few times. These aren’t all the installations that Nuart had this year, but here we have the finished installations by Eine, Jordan Seiler, Saber, Ron English, Aakash Nihalani, How and Nosm, and Sickboy. Thanks to Ian Cox for all of the great photos coming out of Nuart.
Continue reading “Nuart 2012 part two: Indoors”
This year’s edition of the Moniker Art Fair opens in Shoreditch this Thursday. This year, Moniker will be more focused than ever before on installations rather than traditional art fair gallery booths. Actually, the show will be entirely installations. Niels ‘Shoe’ Meulman, Ludo, Jorge Rodríguez-Gerada, C215, Remi/Rough, Ben Slow and others will be there.
Moniker opens on Thursday from 7-9pm, and will be open Friday and Saturday 11-7pm and Sunday 11-5pm.
More info on the Facebook event page.
Photo courtesy of Moniker Projects
Last week, I was in Stavanger, Norway for this year’s Nuart Festival. It was a blast, but I’ve been really slow about posting about it. I was at Nuart as part of the Nuart Plus conference, the lecture and panel discussion side of Nuart. Some of the other speakers included Tristan Manco, Carlo McCormick, Ron English and Evan Pricco. Hopefully soon, the video from Nuart Plus will be online, but in the mean time, I’m going to have to focus on the main part of the festival: The art.
Nuart is one of my favorite mural festivals, along with Living Walls and FAME, because they have consistently and for many years brought together the street art community to improve a city otherwise would not have all that much street art or graffiti (there are a handful of local writers and and street artists who should not be discredited, but Nuart’s work certainly dominates the city). The argument can be made that the annual street art invasion might be insensitive to local residents, but I’m a big fan of turning cities into temporary playgrounds when art gets left behind.
In this first of probably 3-4 posts about this year’s Nuart, there are just images of the set up and the work in progress. While Nuart leaves Stavanger with great new murals and installations every year, one of the great things about Nuart (and many mural festivals) is what happens between the artists and the festival staff behind the scenes. Every evening, there were group dinners at Food Story, and usually some light drinking followed. In this way, Nuart ends up facilitating conversations and friendships that go beyond the festival and may carry over into future work.
There are two components to the art production side of Nuart: Indoor installations and outdoor installations (mostly, but not entirely, murals). This year’s Nuart artists were: The Wa, Aakash Nihilani, Eine, How and Nosm, Ron English, Mobstr, Niels “Shoe” Meulman, Saber, Dolk, Jordan Seiler, and Sickboy. A very solid line up with a few heavy hitters and a few talented but underrated guys.
The indoor installations were in the old beer halls of Tou Scene, a venue that Nuart has used a few times before. Tou Scene is a great space for Nuart’s installations, because the beer halls are basically these big beautiful archways like the arches that the London galleries Black Rat Projects and Arch 402 are in. The outdoor installations take place all across the city.
There was some amazing work made this year, with highlights being a murals by Ron English and Shoe, and the indoor installation by How and Nosm. Expect many more photos over the next week or two.
Continue reading “Nuart Festival 2012 – The setup”
Here’s some stuff I missed this week while sitting under a giant stack of books and papers to read, mostly stuff I was supposed to read for school but avoided because I was at Nuart last weekend.
Photo by Colin Chazaud
Henrik Haven visited FAME Festival in Grottaglie, Italy for the festival’s opening events last month. Naturally, he took plenty of stunning shots of the new work there. In a two-part series, we’ve selected some of our favorite pieces from FAME 2012. In part one here, we’ve got walls by Erica il Cane, Conor Harrington, Interesni Kazki, Vhils, Moneyless, Brad Downey, Akay and Cyop & Kaf.
Continue reading “Murals at FAME Festival 2012, part one”
For most of last week, I was in Stavanger, Norway for the 2012 Nuart Festival. Naturally, even though I was there in part as press, I spent very little time on my computer and didn’t do any blogging. So, expect a full post or two about Nuart later this week, but for now here’s what I missed writing about while I was away:
Photo by Ian Cox
