A Preview of the Second Annual Nuart Aberdeen Street Art Festival

The second annual Nuart Aberdeen kicks off next month, celebrating the work of international street artists with workshops, guided tours, and film screenings throughout the course of the four-day festival. The public art platform aims to activate its local art scene while also encouraging visiting artists to collaborate with its twin city of Stavanger, which has hosted the original Nuart Festival for the last 17 years.

Nuart is an international contemporary street and urban art festival, held annually in Stavanger, Norway since 2001. It is widely considered the world’s leading celebration of Street Art among its peers.

Nuart Festival provides an annual platform for national and international artists who operate outside of the traditional art establishment. From the first week of September an invited international team of street artists 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.

The event aims to stimulate debate by challenging entrenched notions of what art is, and more importantly, what it can be. Nuart aims to provide an internationally relevant, challenging and dynamic environment for artists, students, gallery goers and public alike; an event that aims to reflect the culture as well as participate it helping define it.

Nuart aims to explore and present new movements and works with artists operating across the spectrum of ‘Street Art’. Street art has its roots in situationism, graffiti, post-graffiti, muralism, comic culture, stencil art and activism amongst many other things. It is without a doubt the most exciting development in visual art for decades. A ‘movement’ that has caught the imagination of the general public, collectors, auction houses and curators the world over.

Nuart consists of a series of citywide exhibitions, events, performances, interventions, debates & workshops surrounding current trends and movements in street art practice by some of the worlds leading practitioners and emerging names. The artists who attend the festival are among the most acclaimed and progressive public art practitioners in the world.

Nuart continues to pioneer a new breed of art exhibition that is neither institutionalised nor commercial. Without the usual restraints of curatorial and corporate preferences, the event consistently brings out the best in its invited guests.

In 2017 the Scotland-based festival presented site-specific murals and interventions by Fintan Magee, Martin Whatson, Add Fuel, Jaune, and more. This year’s installations and temporary exhibitions will center around the theme “A Revolution of the Ordinary,” and include work by international artists Bordalo II, Bortusk Leer, Carrie Reichardt, Dr. D, Elki, Ernest Zacharevic, Glöbel Bros., Hyuro, Milu Correch, Nimi & RH74, Phlegm, and Snik.

The opening of Inky Protest, a collaborative exhibition between Nuart and Peacock Visual Arts, kicks off the festival on Thursday, April 12. The exhibition will feature work by artists such as Brad Downey, Mike Giant and Ralph Steadman, Futura, Martha Cooper and Jamie Reid. You can view a preview of the upcoming festival in the video below.