Stavanger City Harbour Tour

Cement Eclipses

Spanish artist Isaac Cordal is best known for his miniature-sized street interventions.

Standing at less than a foot tall, the figures are easily missed, and the precariousness of the statuettes contribute to the subjects' sense of jeopardy.

Many of the objects were placed on miniature balconies high up on walls, while some were placed on natural ledges.

All giving passersby an extra reason to lift their eyes and have another look at their everyday environment.

Junction

Sandra Chevrier and Martin Watson created the Junction mural on the occasion of their two-person exhibition at Nuart Gallery in 2017.

Canadian artist Sandra Chevrier creates contemporary pop art that merges painting and collage.

Norwegian street and stencil artist Martin Whatson is best known for his colourful take on graffiti motifs, portraying monochrome stencilled figures interacting with extravagant swatches of multicoloured graffiti imagery.

For their collaboration, Chevrier hand-painted the underlying female portrait while Watson contributed his signature, abstract graffiti as the overlaying mask layer.

For his 2016 participation in Nuart, Jaune left a selection of miniature workers in the city and around the harbour.

Belgian artist and satirist Jaune has made a name for himself by painting a troupe of easy to spot characters alongside their larger counterparts in urban art, as they playfully interact with their surroundings.

With a twist of irony, Jaune created this series after working in sanitation, where he noticed that the general public largely ignored these workers despite their high-vis vests and service to the city.

Jaune’s mischievous characters can be found ganging up on the obstacles around them and wreaking tiny chaos with their actions.

Lars Hertervig's Old Pine Trees

Julio Anaya Cabanding carries out pictorial interventions by creating detailed replicas of well-known classical paintings in unusual places.

The artist's technique of choice, trompe-l'œil, uses realistic imagery to create optical illusions, suggesting to the viewer that these well-known paintings have suddenly appeared in inhospitable and decaying places.

The resulting work tells a story of symbolically liberating the paintings from the museum's sacralised rooms to place them in other spaces and creating new meanings.

For this work, Cabanding chose to work from Norwegian painter Lars Hertervig's 1865 work "Old Pine Trees".

While the artist's graffiti contemporaries typically focused on lettering and pictorial muralism, Futura pioneered a different kind of abstract street art.

The artist's impressionistic fields of colour paved the way for new generations of artists.

For the Nuart Festival, the artist created a monumental colour block mural that was visible from the harbour.

Futura is perhaps the only graffiti artist who can be recognised by his palette of colours alone.

Untitled

Elki is a Scottish street artist best known for his multi-layered stencil works, often referencing graffiti, DJ culture and Scottish heritage like bagpiping.

Over the course of his career making art on the streets, the artist has developed a photorealist style employing intricate hand-cut stencils.

On his visit to Nuart, Elki contributed a typically photorealist mural depicting a seated female figure dressed up for a night out.

The bottle in the bottom left corner first appears like a regular whisky bottle, but closer inspection reveals the Nuart logo.

Inés

Your Freedom Ends where an Other Man's Nose Begins

Spanish artist Ampparito often takes simple objects from everyday life and destabilises them.

The artist explains that his work focuses on "subverting objects, meanings, and realities to generate new experiences or situations."

His anatomical study of the moulded plastic elbow of a Playmobil figure responds to its lack of power. By breaking the figure's arm, he creates an elbow and the possibility of freedom of movement, but the figure ultimately loses its power of stability by doing so.

Ampparito notes that this work is also a response to the proverbial expression that "your right to swing your arms ends just where the other man's nose begins."

The Observer

Bergen-based Skurk created "The Observer" for Nuart in 2018.

The mural plots the average global temperature back to the eighties alongside a quote from Donald Trump dismissing global warming as a threat to humanity.

Each tree ring represents a year, and within each work lies a hidden message that relates to a significant event or events that occurred during that tree's lifetime. 

The rise in average temperature may seem insignificant when viewed from year to year but added together; the differences make an impact.

Poppies

Taking inspiration from the absurd and ironic, Russian conceptual artist Slava PTRK produces site-specific work in various media.

For this mural, the artist painted a girl picking poppies on the side of the hotel Havly in central Stavanger.

In addition to his artistic practice, Slava Ptrk co-founded the street art gallery Sweater in Yekaterinburg, Russia, after graduating from Shadrinsk School of Arts in Yekaterinburg.

He also curated Stenograffia, an international graffiti festival held annually in Yekaterinburg and edited Stenograffia’s online publication about graffiti and street art.

Russian Street Artists are generally under-represented in the culture, something Nuart is always actively working to improve.

A Clear View + A Clear Mind = A Green World

John Fekner is best-known for his series of environmentally conceptual works consisting of words, symbols, and dates spraypainted throughout the five boroughs of New York in the 1970s. He is regarded as a pioneer in street art culture.

These "Warning Signs" pointed out hazards and dangerous conditions that overtook New York City and its environment during this decade. The project expanded in 1977, where Fekner created "Word-Signs."

He then began a crusade tirelessly concerned with environmental and social issues through hand-cut cardboard stencils and spray paint.

Moona Lisa

Nick Walker is a British graffiti artist best known for his stencil works that frequently joins the cultural with tongue-in-cheek humour.

Born in Bristol, he was part of the groundbreaking graffiti scene in the early 1980s and played a significant role in shaping the look of early British street art.

"Moona Lisa", painted in 2006, is the artist's signature twist on Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa.

This time Mona is depicted with her back turned towards the viewer, pulling up her skirt and cheekily exposing her buttocks to passing motorists. Mona becomes Moona.

Chant

Liberty Du, professionally known as Faith XLVII or Faith47, is a South African street artist best known for her monumental figurative murals, regularly featuring powerful female figures.

Beginning her career in 1997, only a few years after the end of apartheid, her work frequently comment on issues like environmentalism, inequality, poverty and female empowerment.

Faith XLVII created "Chant" for Nuart in 2013. The wall-sized mural depicts a blindfolded female figure trapped in a ring of barbed wire. The ethereal mural is typical of the artist's work, blending grand scale with a delicate, painterly touch.