Free talks, walks and arguments run alongside street art festival
Somewhere in the middle of Nuart’s week of murals and public art, there’s a two-day conference that puts a Neolithic archaeologist from Orkney on the same bill as a pop culture critic from New York. That gives you a fair idea of what Nuart Plus is doing this year.
The programme opens with Robert Montgomery’s 11-metre text installation at Bon Accord Baths, the Art Deco building on Justice Mill Lane that has been closed for years. Montgomery, a Scottish artist known for text-based public works and billboard poems, created the piece with Nuart curator Martyn Reed specifically for the space. The title: Even After All This Time the Sun Never Says to the Earth “You Owe Me.” Open daily from noon to 6pm through the 26th.
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The conference
Day one (24 April) is at King’s College Conference Centre, University of Aberdeen, 11am to 5pm. Dr Erik Hannerz talks about sticker culture. Dr Emma Bryning looks at historical graffiti. Dr Antonia Thomas, an archaeologist based in Orkney, goes back further still with a talk on nine centuries of marks in Neolithic Orkney, connecting prehistoric rock art to what people are doing on walls now.
Stephen Ellcock, the London-based author who has spent years building an ever-growing collection of art and imagery on social media, appears in conversation with Carlo McCormick, a critic and curator whose books include TRESPASS: A History of Uncommissioned Urban Art. The day closes with a panel on urban creativity chaired by Dr Catriona McAra from the University of Aberdeen.
Day two (25 April) moves to Cowdray Hall for artist talks from Alisa Oleva, Remi Rough and HICKS. Oleva is a London-based walking artist whose practice includes walking scores, soundwalks and one-to-one performances in city streets. Rough came up through the graffiti movement and now makes abstract paintings shaped by that background. HICKS works through the tradition of the sublime landscape in British Romanticism and has described his work as coming from, yet standing against, the pop and market-led sensibilities of street art and modern muralism. The afternoon wraps with a Meet the Festival Artists panel chaired by writer and curator Evan Pricco.
The evenings
On 23 April at the Lemon Tree, Poetry in the Streets pairs Montgomery and Pricco for a conversation on poetry and public language, followed by a fireside chat with McCormick. HICKS closes the evening with a solo critical intervention. Doors at 7.30pm.
The following night (24 April), Fight Club takes place upstairs at Cheerz on Exchange Street. Two opposing teams of artists, academics and industry professionals argue a contested topic in street art culture, in a format borrowed from the Greek symposium. Doors at 9pm, debate until 11pm, then music until 1am.
The walks and the weekend
Oleva leads two art walks from Aberdeen Art Gallery Courtyard, both free but ticketed, both around 90 minutes. Write to the City (25 April, 5pm) explores the streets as something that can be read and written back to. Listen to the City Whispers (26 April, 1pm) focuses on the sounds of the city that tend to go unnoticed.
Saturday 25 April is where everything overlaps. The conference is at Cowdray Hall, Stuart Holdsworth of Inspiring City is leading guided tours of the new murals from Academy Courtyard on Belmont Street (1pm and 4pm, also running Sunday), and the Big Belmont Bash takes over Belmont Street, Back Wynd, Gaelic Lane and Little Belmont Street from midday with a free street festival.
That night, the festival closes with F*ck Art, Let’s Dance at Exodus, upstairs at Triplekirks on Schoolhill. DJ and festival curator Martyn Reed and friends on vinyl and house music. Doors at 10pm, music from 11pm until 3am. Open to artists, crew and the public.
The full programme and booking details are at the Nuart Aberdeen website.
