Akershus Hospital Children’s Department cares for children from 0 to 18 years old. Children undergoing orthopedic and surgical treatment or being treated for cancer can stay in the ward for many weeks. This Christmas it will not be possible for them to be visited by siblings or friends due to strict corona measures.

The idea behind the designs by father-of-three Skaren is that the character’s shape and color captures the little one’s imagination, while the older patients and staff will enjoy their humour and expressions.

Head of Department, Else Andresen, contacted Street Art Oslo earlier this summer. She explains why art has an important role to play in this environment:

“Pictures, colors and figures capture children’s attention and can make the environment a little less scary and recognizable. They can be distracted a little from pain and fear, and it also makes it easier to start communication with them when we look at the pictures together.”

“Frode has created three characters that radiate energy, good humor and care for each other through working together to make things happen. His work definitely helps create a good atmosphere and is something that will be enjoyed for many years to come.”

Street Art Oslo curator James Finucane decided to prioritise the project not only for the young patients but also frontline health workers who have had little to cheer this year:

“We´re not saving lives with this project but as Frode puts it, perhaps we can save a moment. It’s been an incredibly gloomy year, and this winter will be especially tough for children who find themselves in hospital over the holiday. The least we can do is give patients and staff something to smile about. With so many practical hurdles posed by covid-19, it also became a personal mission to create a meaningful art project during the pandemic period.”

Artist Frode Skaren used his years of experience to build a narrative that can be followed from the entrance through the corridors and into each individual room:

“After being greeted at the entrance you pass through the double-doors with the characters and into their world, which is not scary but actually full of fun and playfulness. I chose universal shapes, such as squares, triangles and circles, which I hope will be timeless. The same characters are repeated, to create recognition in the little ones but I also added some hidden things that the older patients and the adult employees and visitors may also discover. ”

The project was made possible thanks to support from two local schools – Algarheim and Mailand – Oslo and Akershus Children’s Cancer Association and Lillestrøm bank. Following positive feedback, Street Art Oslo and Akershus Hospital are already in discussion about expanding the project in 2021.

About the artist

Frode Skaren (aka Uglylogo) studied Visual Communication at Oslo National Academy of the Arts. After completing a BA he moved back to his home town of Kvinesdal to set up his studio in an old barn, complete with his very own screen printing table. Frode often works under the alias Uglylogo and is best known for his charming characters and playful motifs. His work has been featured in international magazines such as Creative Review, Monocle, Computer Arts, Business Week and Little White Lies.

About Street Art Oslo

Street Art Oslo is an online platform and IRL network founded by James Finucane consisting of artists, curators, producers and scholars dedicated to improving conditions for the production and dissemination of Street Art in the Oslo region.

www.streetartoslo.no
@street_art_oslo

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Commissioned by Sandvika By in collaboration with Bærum kommune, and produced by Street Art Oslo, the work took five days to complete.

James Finucane, Street Art Oslo: “We knew early on that painting the columns from top to bottom would look incongruous against the backdrop of this vast expanse of raw concrete. What this space needed was something more subtle, something that enhanced this stunning architecture as opposed to camouflaging it. Xenz´s trompe-l’œil technique and Nima Taheri´s stunning film and photography certainly delivered.”

With a total surface area of 200m2, Xenz set about tackling the columns with the same graffiti techniques he first picked up painting derelict warehouses in Hull in the north of England. 125 years on from the famous visit of Claude Monet to Sandvika in 1895, the project also gave Xenz the opportunity to draw on some unlikely comparisons between the Impressionst and graffiti movements:

“Putting paint in tubes gave the Impressionists the opportunity to work en plein air for the first time. In the same way, the portable nature of spray paint created new opportunities for making art in the streets like never before. I grew up painting in derelict warehouses in Hull but it wasn´t so much about replicating the New York style graffiti we were seeing in magazines and TV programmes. For me it was about using the tools and techniques of graffiti – which were readily available to anyone – to make the environment around us more beautiful.” Xenz

The artwork was formally opened by Berit Inger Øen, Bærum City Council Head of Culture, as part of an event co-organised by Street Art Oslo and Sandvika By.

Davina Seljelid Arnesen, Sandvika By: “I have long been excited about this project and am very pleased with the result, which has transformed the area by adding colour to the city. Over time, Sandvika has received many well-known street art works and I hope Xenz´s artwork will have a mark on the city for many years to come. I would also like to thank Arne Eriksen for his generous donation, which provided the financing for this project.”

The project is one of four undertaken by Xenz during a month-long stay in the Norwegian capital thius summer.

Xenz (Graeme Brusby, b. 1974) is a graduate of Edinburgh College of Art and has worked as an artist for over 20 years. He started painting graffiti at just 14-years-old, inside the derelict warehouses of Hull, England. Gradually, he has developed a completely distinctive and experimental style, where he uses spray cans to paint landscapes inhabited by birds and butterflies. He has lived in Bristol where he painted alongside members of the renowned graffiti crew TCF, as well as artists such as Banksy and Inkie. He has also participated in exhibitions in the United Kingdom, Miami, New York, Basel, Ibiza, New Delhi and Sydney. For the past year and a half he has been living in Rome.

Links: www.streetartoslo.no / @street_art_oslo
www.xenz.org / @xenzogram

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Background

Not only are e-scooters a nuisance and a danger to personal health (both for riders and pedestrians) they are also bad for the environment (manufactured and transported from the Far East; powered by non-biodegradable lithium batteries, charged on the city’s electricity grid; distributed around the city in petrol-guzzling vans etc.)

Add to this the concern that they represent a shift from public to “private” transportation and it´s clear that e-scooters are not environmentally-friendly “last mile” transportation solutions so much as the greedy tentacles of Silicon Valley brands and unscrupulous start-ups wrapping themselves around our public sidewalks.

The wealth created by the city in which we chose to live, work and play is extracted from it by a small handful of shareholders and investment bankers often thousands of miles away. The California-based company Lime (which operates in Oslo) was valued at $2million on its last share issue. Yet the reluctance of Oslo Municipality to curtail the influence of private actors in our shared public spaces is an increasing source of concern and frustration for the city’s inhabitants, ourselves included.

We have tried to engage the Oslo European Green Capital 2019 Secretariat on these issues but our requests for a hearing have so far fallen on deaf ears. It seems that this dubious honour is more about greenwashing and environmental tokenism than tackling the root causes of the ecological and social problems, not least multi-national companies and speculators appropriating our public spaces for their own financial gain to the detriment of local people and the planet.

Photographs by Subvertising Norway

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Photo from her ongoing exhibition in Mint Streetart Galleri.  It will be running up untill the end of April 2019.

Yasjia is currently in Iceland and she is about to start her next mural project (15 meter x 3 meter)!

Stay tuned…

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Pressure is mounting on the Norwegian government to back down on the compulsory slaughter of reindeer herds that are the livelihood of the Sámi people.

Artists and activists took to the streets of Oslo yesterday to support the reindeer herding Sámi Jovsset Ánte Sara.

Jovsset Ánte (26) is taking the Norwegian government to the UN Human Rights Committee to protect his reindeer and the rights of Sámi reindeer herders. The widely criticised, and highly destructive, Reindeer Husbandry Act and the implementation of a compulsory reindeer slaughter policy will drive him and other young reindeer herders out of business, forcing them out of their livelihood and thereby their culture and inherited rights.

Despite the fact that the fate of Jovsset Ánte’s herd has been brought to the attention of the UN, the Norwegian state refuses to wait for the UN´s verdict and Jovsset Ánte has been given until December 31 to decimate his herd to 75 reindeer.

Jovsset Ánte now has two options: to slaughter his herd and walk away from his rights, culture and traditional way of life, or to refuse the slaughter and face tremendous fines adding to the 70,000 Norwegian kroner (8 000USD) he has already been fined during the judicial process.

Subvertising Norway, who carried out the action, is a national network of artists and activists who would like to see public discourse replace outdoor advertising in the urban environment.

“We believe that public space should be a forum for dialogue, debate and the exchange of ideas, not somewhere to be force fed harmful messages about needless consumption” said a spokesperson for Subvertising Norway. “Naturally, we wanted to support the urgent matter of Sámi and their rights, regarding a potential tragedy for a young Sámi reindeer herder and, more broadly, for human rights in Norway.”

“The act of subverting advertisements (or ‘subvertising’) has long been utilized by artists as a tool for social commentary and protest. By mimicking the scale and visibility of advertising, it´s possible to raise awareness about important issues such as this but also the wider phenomenon of who has the power and authority to communicate messages and create meaning in our urban environment.”

Help protect Jovsset Ánte and the rights of Sámi reindeer herders and the Sámi community in Norway by signing the petition calling on the Norwegian state to postpone the enforced slaughter of Jovsset Ánte´s reindeer herd until the UN´s verdict.

Artwork by Máret Anne Sara
Photography by Per Heimly

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Jazoo Yang is interested in the evolution of cities and the nostalgic poetry that emerges from popular neighborhoods demolished at high speed in areas of urban redevelopment. Her newest mural project for Nuart Festival uses Korean symbols of forced evictions and demolition to raise awareness about all those globally who are exposed to the threat of forced migration.

The title, ‘1881-1’, refers to the address of a demolished house in Busan in Yang´s native South Korea, which was cleared as part of the city´s sweeping gentrification program. In Busan, there are over 100 redevelopment districts eating away at the city’s landscape day-by-day. The mural holds particular significance in Stavanger East; vast swathes of which have been transformed from a post-industrial ruin into a thriving residential and ´start-up´ district over the last 10 years. Each symbol (either a circle, cross or dot) carries a specific meaning: deserted house, demolishment or illegal occupation – indicating whether or not the building is clear and ready for demolition or not. In Stavanger, as in Busan, they´ve been uniformly sprayed in highly saturated, garish red.

While in Stavanger Yang also created a new iteration of her Dots series in which she typically covers a home set for demolition with thumbprints. In Korea, the thumbprint – or “Jijang” – has a legal and personally binding power similar to a signature. With just a thumbprint, whole communities are turned over to destruction; people driven to bankruptcy; and just as easily, millions of dollars exchanged. Yang explains: “Alleys, houses, trees, communities and everything that took a long time to embellish are gone in an instant without a trace. The act of imprinting each red Jijang is a promise to remember all of this and a temporal and spatial record.”

In Stavanger, the artist marked a dilapidated, land-locked boat with thumbprints, alluding to the evisceration of traditional seafaring industries in Stavanger such as shipping and fishing in favour of the lucrative oil industry, as well as the global migrant crisis and widespread apathy towards the humanitarian crisis arising from forced migration on a mass scale.

Gallery:

Well done Jazoo Yang!!!

ISSA TEAM

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Jan Vormann’s global Dispatchwork project uses LEGO bricks to repair damaged walls. Some of his installations use only a handful of toy bricks but in Stavanger Jan and a team of helpers sifted through over 50kg to make an installation near Nuart´s spiritual home Tou Scene.

Vormann describes the project as “a forum to further develop, piece by piece, a global game together”, one that encourages citizens to take back public space and leave their mark in a playful way…”as long as you don’t mind when the structures slowly ‘dissolve’ or ‘disappear’ back into children’s toyboxes”, he says. The collaborative and playful nature of the project was evident in Stavanger as volunteers and passers-by all got involved in making the largest installation, which took 3 days to complete.

Next week, Vormann heads to Italy to present a new Dispatchwork at the Venice Architecture Biennal in collaboration with the French Pavillion. In his own words, his participation in Nuart was all about stocking up on “street cred” before the prestigious event.

Born in 1983 in Bamberg, Germany, after initial studies in Art History and Conservation of Monuments at Otto-Friedrich Universität Bamberg (2003-2004) Vormann changed his field of studies to Visual Arts (Sculpture) at Kunsthochschule Berlin-Weißensee (2004-2011) with the Professors Karin Sander, Inge Mahn and Berndt Wilde. He graduated with Diploma (2010) and Meisterschüler (2011).

Vormann currently lives in Berlin and works in the T10 Studios. Since 2013, he also teaches in the New Media/Interaction Design department of Berliner Technische Kunsthochschule BTK.

janvormann.com

Great piece Jan!!!

ISSA Team

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Said Dokins conducted interviews with individuals from Johannes Læringsenter – a resource centre for newly arrived immigrants to Stavanger – as well as speaking to Norwegians about their attitudes towards foreigners. Through conversations with people from such diverse backgrounds Dokins explored notions of freedom and belonging. “The idea was to collect the words of individual people and coalesce them into something that represents a shared experience”, explains Dokins.

The resulting text – ´næarhet´ or ´proximity´ in English – references how our individual reality is shaped by our environment and how this can be disrupted through displacement and migration. The word ´nærhet´ is spelled using the names and words of the individuals Dokins interviewed during his time in Stavanger and is painted in the artist´s trademark calligraphic style – which combines Japanese calligraphy with pre-phonetic Mexican notation. The background – half red, half blue, meeting in the middle – is a metaphor for the compromise required in order for us all to live in an equal and compassionate society.

The mural can be found on Nedre Banegate 45 in Badedammen, an area in the east of the city where working class and immigrant populations have always traditionally settled.

Photos by Brian Tallman.

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Each painting depicts tree rings that act as a diary for nature. 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.

Skurk´s new mural in Stavanger plots the average global temperature back to the eighties alongside a quote from Donald Trump dismissing global warming as a threat to humanity. The rise in average temperature may seem insignificant when viewed from year to year but added together the small differences make an impact. Not unlike Street Art itself.

The Observer series as a concept stems from the artist´s deep-rooted fascination with the woods and a growing desire to leave behind all the digital tools of the trade.

The exhibition at Nuart Gallery showcases original hand-printed artworks on canvas and paper taken directly from the wooden source. There will also be a selection of screen prints, including a triptych of the original ´observers´ that marked the beginning of this year-long study. In addition to their visual artworks Skurk has collaborated with Bergen sound designers to bring to life the voice of the trees, the result of which can be heard and bought at the exhibition in the form of a beautifully crafted vinyl.

Photos by Brian Tallman and courtesy the artist.

Exhibition dates: September 5th – October 6th
Opening night: September 5th at 19:00

Address: Nuart Gallery, Salvågergata 10, Stavanger

Great job Skurk!!!

ISSA Team

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One can see several animals full filled with patterns and colours that make this murals standing up from the surrounding.

About Art for All:

“Art for All in the World was founded by Sharon and Peter Claesson. With an extensive international background in both the private and public sector, together they have led countless development projects across the globe, ranging from establishing sustainable development initiatives for local governments to forming a foundation for youth and street children in Latin America.”

Amazing piece Spaik!

Tomás Cardoso/ISSA Team

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