Thirteen artists, a poetic theme, and works ranging from hand-sized to house-sized.
For this year’s Nuart Aberdeen, curator Martyn Reed went looking for talent closer to home. Of the 13 artists taking part, the majority are Scottish. “I started to look closer to home and saw that Scotland did, in fact, have enough talent to warrant a majority Scottish event,” he said. “After all, it’s Scottish businesses and taxpayers who co-finance the event.”
The production crew follows the same logic. The three people heading up the festival are KMG, Aberdeen-born and now based in Edinburgh; Ciarán Glöbel, based in Glasgow; and Martin “Tazzy” Widerlechner, based in Aberdeen. Reed calls them a “trifecta of Scottish cities” and hopes the collaboration will help build a lasting national network for street art. All three previously volunteered with Nuart before stepping into producing roles. “The fact that all three producers have previously volunteered with Nuart just shows their genuine dedication to the culture,” said Reed, “and has helped nurture the skills and values to run something like this.”
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The theme is “Poetry Is In The Streets.” Most, though not all, of the works will involve text. Reed has said he wants the festival to encourage more people to have a go at making work themselves, young and old alike.
Scale varies considerably. Some pieces will be no bigger than your hand. Others will fill the side of a building. The festival runs from 22 to 26 April.
It’s also worth noting that “street art” is being interpreted loosely this year. The lineup includes a walking artist, a paste-up poet, a sculptor and a signpainter alongside the muralists. Reed has said that at this stage, you have as good an idea of what the works will look like as he does. That’s pretty damned exciting!
Here’s who’s coming...
Alisa Oleva
Most Nuart works stay fixed once painted. Oleva’s don’t. A London-based walking artist, she creates performances and encounters in public space: walkshops, soundwalks, soft parkour sessions, treating the city as something to move through rather than decorate. Her work explores urban choreography, the politics of public space, and what it means to really pay attention to a street. Of all the artists on the bill, she’s the hardest to anticipate.
Ciarán Glöbel
Glasgow signpainter Glöbel works with traditional lettering techniques on reclaimed polyvinyl, producing typographic work with a graphic sensibility rooted in pre-digital culture. He’s been painting murals and signs internationally for over 15 years and co-founded Grateful, an independent Glasgow gallery dedicated to graffiti and mural culture, in 2025. He’s also one of this year’s producers, so his involvement in the festival extends well beyond the wall.
dr.d AKA Subvertiser
Dr.d has spent decades doctoring billboards, cutting and pasting to turn advertising against itself using a technique borrowed from the fly-posting industry of the 90s. The targets tend to be brands and media narratives. The approach is more forensic than confrontational, which gives the work a particular kind of staying power. He returns to Nuart Aberdeen this year.
HICKS
HICKS has spent 20 years making large-scale mural work rooted in British Romanticism, moving through divination, folk saints, and the territory between apocalypse and transcendence. He’s openly resistant to the commercial end of street art. That sets him at an odd angle to the rest of the festival.
James Klinge
Glasgow-born Klinge uses hand-cut stencils and spray paint, but the results look considerably closer to oil painting than anything from a can. He’s spent two decades developing that level of control, applying it to figurative and portrait work drawn from historical and contemporary sources. What you end up looking at doesn’t obviously advertise how it was made. He’s a returning Nuart Aberdeen artist.
KMG
Aberdeen-born KMG draws on Celtic folklore and oral storytelling traditions to make work that asks how marginalised communities carry, or lose, their cultural identity. She’s been creating street work for over a decade and is a Nuart Aberdeen veteran, with previous murals at Union Square and Aberdeen International Airport. She returns this year in a dual role, as both artist and producer.
Molly Hankinson
Glasgow-based Hankinson works across mural, print and installation, examining gendered experiences of safety and space. Her work is energetic and precise, and she’s been moving towards abstraction recently as a mode of exploration. She’s particularly interested in how art can function as a site of comfort, which is a different ambition from most of what ends up on walls.
Remi Rough
Rough came up through the graffiti movement and has spent 30 years building an abstract practice out of it. The early years as a style writer still show in the geometry and architectural structure of his current work. It sits at some distance from where it started while remaining clearly connected to it.
Robert Montgomery
Reed has described Montgomery as one of his favourite people, as well as one of his favourite artists. His billboard poems, light works and fire poems have ended up in museum collections from New York to Houston, and he was part of the first Nuart Aberdeen in 2017. His piece on Jopps Lane is still there. For a festival built around poetry and public space, his return makes obvious sense.
The Rebel Bear
The Rebel Bear has spent a decade making street art across Scotland, London, Havana, Mumbai and New York, with work now held in the National Museum of Scotland and the Museum of Cardiff. His subject matter spans politics, love and what he describes as the absurdity of the world we’ve made. The range of locations tells its own story about how far the work has travelled.
The Writing Is On The Wall
Self-described as a street poet and wall botherer, this artist pastes poems directly onto urban walls using a bucket, a brush and, latterly, a poetry pistol. The practice started during the pandemic, when the need to put words somewhere became pressing enough to act on. The paste-ups are deliberately impermanent, worn down by weather and buried under other work over time.
Trackie McLeod
McLeod isn’t a street artist in any conventional sense, but he works in public space and his visual language is rooted in the streets of the West of Scotland. His sculpture, textile and print work explores queerness, class and masculinity through what he calls “one part tongue-in-cheek, an ounce of sarcasm and a pint of Tennent’s lager.” Reed has been following his career for several years and describes him as one of the most vital voices of his generation.
V2k
Lithuanian/Scottish and Aberdeen-based, V2k works mainly with stencils, combining imagery, text and poetry in public spaces. His work is politically focused, concerned with power imbalances and the capacity of individuals to think freely within systems designed to constrain them. He’s been volunteering with Nuart Aberdeen for many years, making this year’s appearance a long time coming.
Nuart Aberdeen runs from 22 to 26 April 2026.
