I don’t want to hype this up too much, but last weekend I had a really enjoyable time at Nuart in Stavanger and I can’t believe there aren’t more tourists flying out to see this festival. Here are a few pics.
This first pic is by me, the rest are by Ian Cox.
And Logan Hicks made this cool time lapse animation of David Choe and DVS painting:
There are a lot of street art books in stores today. And most of them follow a simple formula: Take photos (or more often than not, acquire them for nothing from other photographers), lay them out on a page, mislabel all the photos so that work by Mister MN is said to be by Adam Neate, think up a title, print the book. Some books in this format are great, some are not, but this is what you expect from a street art book. Well The Adventures of Darius and Downey is absolutely nothing like that. Not one bit. For one thing, Adventures is a non-fiction/creative non-fiction book 200-odd pages in length, and instead of just throwing a bunch of photographs together, this book tells a story.
Naturally, Adventures is about the street art duo Darius and Downey (aka Leon Reid IV and Brad Downey), but it’s also about the street art and graffiti scene in the early 2000’s. Nobody else has really had his or her street art career described in this way before. Sure, you can read interviews or watch documentaries and get the gist of how Barry McGee or Faile got to where they are today, but D&D are the only ones so far to have set out the whole story in print, and as pioneers of sculptural street art and non-typographical graffiti, they deserve that privilege.
And while reading Adventures definitely provides insight into D&D’s work, what I found even more interesting was the lifestyle and culture that they were a part of. Swoon wrote the intro to Adventures and is mentioned in the book, D&D ask permission from ESPO to paint over one of his spots, they confront Swatch, graffiti writer and “cataloger” of street art (aka, guy who steals pieces off of walls) and more.
The Adventures of Darius and Downey tells a story of a friendship and collaboration that changed the face of street art and this book should be essential reading for anybody who wants to learn about the history of street art, but it’s also just a great read. Readers won’t want to put this book down. It is a quick, fun read with much to say.
But why am I posting this review now, more than a year after the book was published and months after I read it? Well Brad Downey and Leon Reid IV are at Nuart2009 in Stavanger right now, which is where I am too. More on Nuart2009 on Monday.
On Thursday I’m headed to Stavanger for Nuart 2009, so as a little taster, I’ve been checking out this trailer for a documentary about Nuart 2008.
And of course, been looking at the photos coming out of Nuart 2009. Chris Stain is already there and has put up a few stencils. While they have unfortunately already been buffed, Ian Cox of WallKandy was there to snap some pics. You can see more of Ian’s Nuart photos on his flickr stream.
Here’s part one of a 5 part talk by Leon Reid IV (aka Darius aka Verbs) from Nuart‘s education program. Chris Stain, Brad Downey and Logan Hicks will be doing talks as well.
Now I’m just going to take a guess here and say that 72% of my readers live in Norway. Okay just went to check my Google Analytics page, and it turns out that very few of my readers actually live in Norway, though the city of Kristiansand does have a surprising number of Vandalog readers, so thanks guys.
Even though not very many Vandalog reader will probably have a chance to see this festival, it needs to be mentioned. Nuart is the annual street art festival taking place in Stavanger, Norway. This year the lineup looks better than ever with some of New York City’s best street artists making their way to Stavanger to work on installation pieces.
Nuart 2009 will play host to Swoon, David Choe, Ben Wolf, Graffiti Research Lab, Brad Downey, Judith Supine, Leon Reid IV, Chris Stain, Logan Hicks and Skewville.
So if for whatever reason you find yourself in Stavanger around September 10th, now you no where to find your street art fix.
