It’d been 4 years since my last Nuart Aberdeen experience, and this time I had the luxury of being on the scene prior to the festival starting in full. This year’s festival theme was Rewilding, and as always, the line up of artists and speakers was impressive, as was their commitment to the exploration of the theme and their alignment to the core Nuart values as a whole.
Swoon kicked the festival off with a special screening of her stop motion short film, ‘Cicada’ and a talk with her fellow New Yorker culture critic Carlo McCormick at the ‘Night at the Museum’ event. Swoon came out of wheat-pasting retirement especially for Nuart Aberdeen and created a series of paper figures tucked away in old brick alcoves, seaport alleys and public green spaces in Aberdeen. I speak for many when I say that these were a joy to track down, and I did so with native Aberdonian street art hunter Lewis Duncan. From the volunteers and artist assistants to academics, festival organisers and of course the artists themselves, it is the human element to the festival that makes it such a success.
Prior to meeting Brazilian man-mountain and all round ray of light Thiago Mazza in the flesh, Nuart volunteer Tazzy showed me photos of the artist lost in conversation with Director of Aberdeen’s Cruickshank Botanic Garden during a visit he’d made there. Mazza’s passion for botany translates into all of this work, and his towering mural is surely the most vibrant and tropical in Aberdeen.
NeSpoon also drew upon local inspiration for her Nuart piece. The Polish artist met Evelyn currie from the Aberdonian Bon Accord Lace Group and used one of Evelyn’s lace projects as inspiration, depicting a Scottish thistle of course.
Tamara Alves’ mural was centred around Virginia Woolf quote, “Every flower seems to burn by itself” and was nestled among a cluster of pretty trees outside a block of flats; right on topic for the Rewilding theme of this year’s festival.
Nuart mainstays Snik produced one of their signature hand-cut, multilayered stencils creating an ethereal portrait; rewilding what used to be just a plain old car park.
French duo Murmure created a huge goldfish in a plastic bag mural entitled ‘Anarchy’ centred around human selfishness when it comes to facing the ugly truth of the environmental issues we all face. Murmure also created ‘Police Montée’ for the festival: a paste-up depicting two French policemen mounted on ostriches. Paste-ups, formed a large part of the festival. In addition to Swoon’s series, there was a city wide treasure hunt featuring a collection by Jamie Reid and Stanley Donwood, a mash-up wall featuring work from Aida Wilde, up-and-coming Norwegian artists to mention a few.
Estonian anarcho-street art collective Stencibility exhibited their show, ’Hello Mister Police Officer’ at the The Print Room gallery forming part of the festival line up and local artist KMG worked with hundreds of local children to create a massive mural at Marischal College for the Chalk Don’t Chalk intervention, which may have just formed the world’s largest single chalk drawing.
The Nuart International Street Art Conference held in Aberdeen Art Gallery ran concurrently with the creation of the art and was packed full of talks, debates, and panel discussions from the leading academics and some of the most prominent voices in the urban art world today.
Issue 7 of Nuart Journal was exclusively launched during the conference: this latest issue contains 12 original articles, visual essays, and interviews, reflecting on the subversive power of TRESPASS, asking in what sense – if any – is unsanctioned art still an act of trespass?
The extra curricular activities saw festival director Martyn Reed take to the decks with F**K ART, LET’S DANCE and raise the roof at SPIN to conclude Nuart Aberdeen 2023. What a way to rewild Scotland’s granite city.
As the fellow festival organisers closed the books on the Aberdeen Festival this year, they asked Martyn Reed, ‘As the director and curator of Nuart, how did this year feel to you in comparison to others? What’s evolving, what’s new?’
‘To be honest, it will be some time before I’ve processed everything about Nuart 2023, in a lot of respect, when a Nuart “ends” , it’s very much the beginning for me. So I’ll let it settle, pick up the bills, enjoy the imagery and memories and hopefully come away with a sense of fulfillment. In saying that, I think that anyone involved in previous editions, would attest that there was something quite magical about this year. It really felt like we were a community of like-minded souls, that we caught and channeled something quite ancient and genuine and authentically human. Perhaps it was the rewilding theme, this yearning for something more than what the current system offers and how we’re forced to navigate it in order to put food on the table. I hope we managed to show some alternatives or triggered some thoughts around what this culture genuinely has to offer away from the glitz and the glamour, the novelty and the merch. Over the course of the production, I see deep and genuine friendships emerging, bonds forming that in some cases will last a lifetime. Apart from all the wonderful art, a genuinely interested public, the production and partners and all that goes into a Nuart edition, there are aspects of it that we’ll never know, the friendships and narratives and the seeds of ideas that are planted, new relationships to each other and to the world that are formed, this is the real story and value of what we all collectively create.
There’s an old proverb I read some years ago, I think it was Indian in origin but I’m sure it spans many cultures, and I’m paraphrasing here, that said something like “The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.” , and it’s this that runs deeply through what we all produced this year and will hopefully continue to produce in our own beautifully rewilded and divergent manner for many years to come.
Nuart Alumni, we salute you !’
Photos by Hannah Judah
