Amid the planning for the annual Nuart festival in Stavanger and the upcoming second edition of Nuart Aberdeen, the team behind these two major public art events just finished their first project for 2018. Continuing the collaboration they started with Ian Strange back in September (covered), they’ve entered the new year with two new art billboards by the Australian artist installed in Stavanger East.
Self-funded and erected in silence, these billboards are a permanent new public art platform in Stavanger. Following Strange’s ongoing body of work that is challenging the notion of “home” as a stable, sacred object, these works are also aiming to bridge the gap between art and everyday life. By employing the omnipresent ad billboards as a way to present art, trigger critical thinking and encourage conversation, these works appeared just in time as Stavanger’s Mayor Christine Sagen Helgø recently expressed her appreciation for Nuart’s recent Social Inclusion Through Street Art project. As a part of Nuart’s ongoing Art City program that aims to find convergence points between street art and the region’s city development plans, the images from artist’s Target series proved to be the perfect fit for the project. Poetically expressing the fragility of home, the images are fitting in these times when Norway’s oil capital is going through massive social changes, and while the Nuart team works hard on developing the region as an international “hub” and destination for street art culture.
Photo credit by Brian Tallman / Video credit by Fifth Wall
Discuss Ian Strange here.
