The line up for the 2023 Nuart Aberdeen festival has been announced. Thirteen different artists from the UK and across the World will add their artworks to the granite city. It will be the fifth time that the full festival has come to the city.
It’s a diverse and hugely impressive line up. Speaking about the range of artists visiting, Martyn Reed the Nuart Director, said that he couldn’t be happier. “I guess it’s testament to the hard work from all involved and the welcome that Aberdeen’s citizens have given to Nuart over the years”. Without exception he said, “everyone we reach out to says yes”.
Reputation
This certainly has a lot to do with the reputation that Nuart has built in the city since that first festival in 2017. Over the years, the artwork has been curated and added to. It’s a unique open air gallery which combines different styles of public art together. Some pieces large and permanent, others brief and fleeting. Many works have disappeared for good. Acting as last hurrahs to the pace of progress as the city develops around them.
Authentic Connection
“Word has spread and continues to do so about just what an incredibly unique and authentic city and project we’ve created together” says Martyn. Supported by a range of supporters and volunteers. It’s a project that he hopes will lead to a fairer and more inclusive relationship to art and culture. Bit by bit that is happening and Aberdeen now has one of the richest collection of public art in the UK.
Artists Announced for Nuart Aberdeen 2023
Aida Wilde (Iran /UK)
An Iranian born, London based printmaker and visual artist. Aida Wilde is the founder of the ‘Print Is Power’ (2013) and ‘Sisters in Print’ (2016) Projects. Her predominantly, screen-printed installations and social commentary posters have been featured on city streets around the world. Her artworks are often a responsive commentary on topics such as gentrification, education and equality.
Eloise Gillow (Spain / UK)
Eloise Gillow is a painter and muralist from the UK, currently based in Barcelona. Eloise paints in a realist style, having studied classical painting in Barcelona before painting in the streets. She draws her imagery from her surroundings, interested in what is expressed by people’s body language, through their gestures and movements. Her paintings invites the viewer to reflect on where and how they find vitality. Those moments of slowing down and reaching into a deeper undercurrent of connection to themselves, each other and the natural world.
Escif (Spain)
Active on the street art scene since the late 90’s. Escif is an artists whose murals question current struggles, resistance movements, the challenges of capitalism and the environmental problems that cloud our time. Sometimes his paintings are presented as minimal gestures that break into reality. They remind us of the beauty of everything that surrounds us.
Jamie Reid (UK)
A British artist an activist, Jamie Reid is perhaps best known for designing album covers for the Sex Pistols. His work as a result has become synonymous with the punk movement and for defining a whole era. Today Reid continues his activism through art working with the likes of Occupy and Extinction Rebellion as well as the Free Pussy Riot movement.
KMG (UK)
Scottish based artist KMG has been creating character-based artwork for over a decade. Reflecting her curious nature, the work explores and confronts themes that range from the mundane to the precarious. Characters are used as a means of connecting with the viewer and as a way of engaging with them. An Aberdonian local, KMG is well versed with the art scene of the city. Her work is playful and full of life though often imbued with a bit of sarcasm and a hint of defiance.
Manolo Mesa (Spain)
Manolo Mesa began painting graffiti with his older brother Francisco Mesa in 2002. Since then his activity and evolution in urban art has developed in his hometown of El Puerto de Santa María until he entered the University of Fine Arts in Seville in 2008. At this point, he decided to put aside the more traditional world of graffiti to start his pictorial work on walls. Since then, he has lived in different cities such as Perugia (Italy), Bilbao, and Paris.
Murmure (France)
Paul Ressencourt and Simon Roché together known as Murmure met during their studies in Fine Arts. Originally, one specialised in creation, graphic arts and urban arts, and the other in arts and technique, however they quickly found a common passion for drawing and street art. Intervening together in public space since 2010, they cover the walls of our cities with their drawing, murals and ephemeral exhibitions. Through their art, Murmure explore themes in a fun and poetic way in order to share their vision of the world. Childhood, the homeless, consumer society, new technologies, and the environment are among their favourite subjects.
NeSpoon (Poland)
Nespoon became active as an artist in 2009 with Lace soon becoming a signature style. Why lace? “Good question” says the artist. “Before I started working with it, I thought lace was something outdated. Today it seems to me that each lace harbours harmony, balance and a sense of natural order. Isn’t that just what we are all searching for instinctively?” Describing her work as being on the border of urban art, ceramics, sculpture and painting. “Sometimes I comment on social problems in my art that I consider important. I paint murals, canvases and create in-situ installations. The heart of my work is ceramic street art”.
Snik (UK)
Internationally-acclaimed artists SNIK combine the creation of hand-cut, multilayered stencils with haunting, ethereal portraiture, born from a male/female dual perspective. Painstakingly produced their works can take several months to produce. Each piece intricate and detailed. On the walls their works are sought after with the duo having painted for Nuart in Aberdeen twice before. The first mural from 2018 can still be seen on Virginia Street. Their second mural in 2021 was created during lockdown on a building on East Green which has since been demolished.
Stanley Donwood (UK)
Stanley Donwood has worked with Radiohead since 1994. His evocative and haunting imagery has created their distinctive visual identity. He has created the official artwork for Glastonbury Festival since 2002 and he has worked with Robert Macfarlane on the Faber bestseller ‘Holloway’ and art directed the film ‘the bomb’ produced by Eric Schlosser and Smriti Keshari.
Swoon (USA)
Caledonia Curry, whose work appears under the name Swoon, is a Brooklyn-based artist. She is widely known as the first woman to gain large-scale recognition in the male-dominated world of street art. Callie’s work carries with it an earnestness. Treating the beautiful as sublime even as she explores the darker sides of her subjects. Her work has become known for marrying the whimsical to the grounded, often weaving in slivers of fairy-tales, scraps of myth, and a recurring motif of the sacred feminine. Tendrils of her own family history—and a legacy of her parents’ struggles with addiction and substance abuse—recur throughout her work.
Tamara Alves (Portugal)
Tamara Alves is a Portuguese visual artist and illustrator, currently based in Lisbon. She has always been interested in the kind of work which is inserted in the world. Fascinated with the aesthetics and urban context of the streets. She weaves a narrative that celebrates in a raw, poetic way the primeval vitality of strong sensations, of an animal becoming – of brute passion. Based on the idea that our instincts are what defines us, the artist invokes a universe of (female) human and animal figures.
Thiago Mazza (Brazil)
A self taught artist, Thiago Mazza is a regular on the international festival circuit. His work a blend of contemporary, classical painting and street art. Bringing nature into the city, he is known for his representation of plantlife and especially tropical flora.
Nuart Aberdeen will take place over the weekend of 8-11 June 2023. In addition to the street art the festival will include a series of talks, films and guided walks. All photos in this post have been provided by Nuart via the artists.
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