Street Art in Stavanger - NuArt transforming the character of the city

Every year Stavanger celebrates Street Art through a Street Art festival called NuArt. Artists from across the world come together for the duration of the festival and create art pieces which live on for the next year or more. The festival was established in 2001 and has been doing an amazing work since then.

"NuArt aims to explore and present new movements and works from within the field loosely termed “Street Art”. Street art has its roots in situationism, graffiti, post-graffiti, muralism, comic culture, stencil art and activism amongst many other things. It is without a doubt the most exciting development in visual art for decades. A “movement” that has caught the imagination of the general public, collectors, auction houses and curators the world over."

The effervescent Paulina :)

Having seen street art across many of the famous cities of the world, I was unsure about what to expect when I first heard about Street Art in Stavanger Sometimes you live in a city and still not know about it's most interesting aspects. And often you need a kind friend who takes an initiative to make sure that you do not miss out on all fantastic stuff simply because of your laziness :)

So that's where my dear friend Paulina came in to show me the street art in Stavanger. She came one cold afternoon (which was how most afternoons were) and we started our walk together. The four of us (Sonakshi, Hina, Paulina and me) started the walk and over the next 4 hours walked like we never did in Stavanger and discovered a part of the city which was completely unknown to us.

Somehow in our heads we had classified Stavanger as a city of old as we never saw an fun activity happening there. This walk and a concert a fe days later proved us completely wrong and we were very happy about that! Such misconceptions one can have about a city if you don't explore it well...

So here is the first set of images from that walk, a little story with each one of them...

The street art is usually created during the street art festival - typically in early September

I like the colors...its permanent art though!

I loved these houses when I saw them first, however a few stories later I wasn't quite so sure

Paulina had lived here during her first winters, and the place gets COLD in the night! :(

I think we spent most time with this one, dead rats on an old and no-longer-in-use factory wall

The NuArt festival is a completely not-for-profit initiative and is run by a group of volunteers every year. The art work is quite spread across the city and it can take a few days to discover all of it by yourself. If there is limited time, walk around the pier and you will find many of these there. There are also Street Art tours that you can take in September and October and they usually start every Sunday from 12 noon from Tou Scene.

The festival in 2015 opens on 5th September, so if you are present in Stavanger during that time, don't miss it. And do let me know if you do attend this marvellous festival - I would love to hear from you :)