The highly acclaimed Nuart Festival, is back for its 18th year in Stavanger, Norway with 26 artists from 12 countries spanning 4 continents working around the theme “Space is the Place.” One of the most influential street art festivals going, Nuart will also continue with their Nuart Plus programming that includes workshops, film screenings and debates surrounding the industry. After a successful Nuart Aberdeen festival earlier this year, the crew is back in their homebase of Stavanger for their annual gathering.
Kicking off on Saturday, September 8 will be the festivals indoor exhibition, taking place at Skur 2, a refurbished warehouse that’s now a stunning art gallery/event space in the idyllic Norwegian fjords. As well as the Nuart Plus International Street Art conference and festival public opening at the Tou Scene Centre for Contemporary Arts, a former 19th century brewery turned arts venue at 1:00pm local time.
This year’s festival also marks the launch of the Nuart Journal, a new forum for critical discourse and commentary on urban art cultures and Street Art practice. Released simultaneously in print and online via www.nuartjournal.com the inaugural issue is a milestone in the development of what could be termed a ‘critical street art’, something Nuart has been dedicated to realizing since its inception.
This years’ symposium “Space is the Place” takes its title from Sun Ra’s Afrofuturist jazz cult classic film, a nod to Geographer Yi-Fu Tuan’s “Space and Place” but also a recognition that for some, art is the only way to escape the violence of reality.
The festival is a call for street artists, urban interventionists, graffiti writers, academic punks, the marginalized, the dispossessed and out-and-out outsiders to come together and collectively support the development of a culture that Nuart believes still maintains revolutionary potential.
Nuart Festival Founder and Director, Martyn Reed:
“This year we’re encouraging artists to work as much as they can outside the framework of the festival, to get off the beaten track and explore the periphery: the side alleys, the edgelands and those less obvious spots in and around the city, areas with the possibility of creating one-to-one encounters between the work and the individual. This is not to say we’re abandoning the production of large-scale works – we recognize that these are an important and valuable aspect of the culture – but to inspire agency in others we believe it’s important to bring the work back to a more human and less authoritarian scale. Ultimately, and perhaps paradoxically, we’re here to support the ‘disorganisation’ of the festival and offer the opportunity of greater freedom, of greater space for artists to move through and work in. Uncurating if you like.
In doing so, we hope to act as a counterweight to the growing forms of spatial exclusion attached to shrink wrapped consumerism and the authoritarian monumentalisation of Street Art culture that Muralism has become. This year, Nuart rises to these challenges, initiating new principles for collaboration whilst exploring alternative methods of organising that will hopefully allow the festival, and street art culture in general, to become adventurous again.”
2018 Nuart Festival Participating Artists:
AFK (NO), Alice Pasquini (IT), Carrie Reichardt (UK), Conzo & Glöbel (UK), Elki (UK), Ememem (FR), Ener Konings (NO), Fintan Magee (AU), Helen Bur (UK), Jan Vormann (FR), Jazoo Yang (KR), Máret Ánne Sara (NO), Martin Whatson (NO), Milu Correch (AR), Miss.Printed (NO), Murmure (FR), Nafir (IR), Nimi & RH74 (NO), Nina Ghafari (IR/NO), Nipper (UK/NO), Octavi Serra (ES), Said Dokins (MX), Skurk (NO), Snik (UK), Tref (NO) and Vlady (IT).
2018 NUART FESTIVAL
FESTIVAL: Thursday, September 6 – Sunday, September 9, 2018
EXHIBITION: Saturday, September 8 – Sunday, September 30, 2018
HOURS OF OPERATION: Wednesday – Sunday, 11:00AM – 5:00PM
