Just a heads up that the NuArt 2011 catalogue is ready to print and available online here. It gives a good run down of the artists invited the program of workshops taking place and the films and talks we have scheduled during the weeks of NuArt. We print 3000 and distribute the paper from the gallery for those of you than can’t make it to Stavanger download the link from above.
So, it’s that time of year again! I’m off for the 6th time to Nuart 2011, this year sees a great line up of friends old and NU. The location is the beer halls at Tou Scene. An old and favorite location in Stavanger. The show opens on the 1st of October, with a wild night of dubstep from Hyperdub in the machine room next door it promises to be an outstanding opening night party. Details of who’s playing at numusic.no
My show production starts from the 18th, although there has been folk who have been hard at it for a long time already! I will of course update here, my take on the proceedings.
This year we release a book Eloquent Vandals with the history of the festival in glorious print, put together by back bone of the festival Victoria & marte (sounds like a song by the fall). Anyhow it will be released at the launch party in the gallery on the last weekend of the show (end of October). Although i am not on the official line up i am sure there will be some Dotmasters stuff up on the streets of Stavanger this year.
Been in Bergen for a week now running production on an interesting project put together by Nuart and NHH (norwegian school of economics). Ben Eine, M-city, Dolk Escif and Huyro have been marking the walls and sowing the seeds of doubt in the next generation of Norwegian economists in a project entitled Fuck Capitalism
NHH Norwegian School of Economics is the leading business school in Norway and it is repeatedly ranked among the top 40 business schools in Europe. The school was founded in 1936 and celebrates its 75 years anniversary in 2011.
To challenge this perception of NHH, the school has in collaboration with Stavanger’s Nuart festival invited some of the world’s most renowned street artists to comment on NHHs ideological foundations on the schools huge walls. The artistic comments from the street artists will be supported by an academic program of presentations and panel debates taking place at NHH on September 6th.
So the project i was working on in Bergen was postponed due to the sad imbecile who decided to try and go down in history through incredible acts of stupidity and cruelty in Oslo last week. I won’t dwell on it but the best thing we can do in reaction is to ignore the sad fuck and commiserate with those affected. Anyhow after a brief stop in Bergen i flew to Stavanger to paint the canvases bought during the Outside in show, luckily the postponement gave me extra time to furfil the mountains of orders placed at the gallery. Thanks Stavanger i feel really loved. Of course because i was stuck in the studio the sun decided to shine, why o why couldn’t done that for the last time when i was stuck up a cherry picker for 60 hours. Today it became too much and i had to get out on the street and put something up (as you can see above). The police even drove past, slowed down waved and continued on their way…you gotta love this town.
Banging them out in the Numusic office.
This week Stavanger was host to the tall ships race, the harbor was chock a block with boats of all shapes and sizes, with the largest tall ship in the world in attendance. Walking along the harbor side was like being transported back to the 1700’s a really cool festival.
[vimeo http://www.vimeo.com/26645639 w=400&h=225]
Dotmasters “On The Hop” from Martin Hawkes on Vimeo.
A Reed Production, in July in Stavanger. The weather wasn’t ideal….it was Horrible to be honest so hats of to Martin Hawkes for sticking with it! God knows how many frames were shot during the 25 hours as he battled it through the weather with me. The last rising sequence was bracketed for the light conditions and merged, I know there around 1200 frames in the last 6 seconds of the movie. think the film is quite beautiful, thanks saft.no!
More shots of the wall can be found here
So it was with full fear we went to bergen to paint a wall with Eine and Steph. Not because they are scary but because we were attempting to paint a bloody big wall in the wettest part of the west coast. Famous for the rain, the town had experienced almost 2 months relentless rain pior to our trip. Ben arrived and the clouds parted….lucky basturd! I was straight (?) from Glastonbury and Ben and steph from Roskida, battle weary and soaked the sun made a decent change. Ben smashed the wall in 3 days. Contraversial calculate cash.
It’s been a hard week, 16 hour days in the wind and the rain, and all too seldom the sun. After 3 days helping Ben Eine in Bergen (traditionally the wettest city on the west coast) in the blazing sunshine, i was hopeful that Stavanger would deliver the same. WRONG! The building above is the Lervig brewery, yes i got given the keys of a brewery and painted a bloody wall. Talk about couldn’t organise a piss up in a… Mike, the master brewer even offered me use of the company fridge! Hard to get enthusiastic for getting drunk in the rain 8m in the air in a cherry picker…..DAM. Dodging raindrops the size of 50mm shells meant working through the night, in the vain hope that the forecasts were right. WRONG! But its nearly there and i”ve only a day more tweaking and introducing some stencil elements. The still above is from Martin Hawks, (Saft films) during the week he road tested some new camera equipment out and produced some stunning time lapse (with a difference!!) . He must of shot 1000’s of frames and each nights brought its own weather logistics, cameras don’t seem to like the rain much either. But wait till you see it…..beautifully filmed. Thanks to Carl for the shots below…again stunning, and of course the Nuart crew, and Reed productions for setting the whole thing up.
So in Stavanger again, this time for a different reason, Nuart happens later in the year. This time for Reed productions first sale show at Skur 2 in downtown Stavanger (do they have a downtown?) Anyway a great line up for this sales show featuring allot of work from Martyns own collection as well as work by Dolk and myself made especially for the show. Opens the 1st of july and looks to be a busy night. There are a few other events happening over the next two weeks in Bergen and stavanger but will post more as they happen.
So friends at DAC have asked me to take part in Graffiti Dialogues an ongoing research into the questions, answers and paradoxes behind the criminalization of street art. Thats probably not the way they would describe it but the series of workshops do go in some way to discuss the issues behind , art crime and public space.
This workshop looks to engage with practicing artists, local designers, academics, graffiti practitioners and others connected to both formal and infomal creative industries, to discuss codes of practice employed.
Anyhow the workshop takes place in the Bristol Museum, chosen for its pivotal place in the institutional acceptance of what is still classed as a crime. There from 11am to 4pm.
