Street Art Project returns to Lagos

ARTURb is organised by LAC – Laboratório de Actividades Criativas which is a non-profit cultural association formed in 1995 and based in the Old Prison of Lagos. The artist residency took place from the 3rd to the 16th of September, where the artists' creations are available to be seen on the streets of Lagos but also inside LAC’s building, where you can see the collective exhibition throughout its space which is running until the 28th of October, (Monday to Saturday from 10am to 6pm).

The artist residency included Lex Zooz (Estonia), Nuno Viegas (Portugal), Rita Ravasco (Portugal), Snik (United Kingdom) and The Caver (Portugal). This year’s walls include, “Tropical Fantasy” by Lex Zooz at Largo Convento Sra da Glória, which is right next to LAC’s building, “The Memory Remains”, by SNIK at Rua do Convento Sra. da Glória, nearby LAC and “Finding New Shapes” by The Caver which is on Rua Lançarote de Freitas, in the historic centre of Lagos.

Lex Zooz is an Estonian artist from the small beautiful town Haapsalu. Since 2016 Lex has been working in his own decorative modern style as an urban mural artist, illustrator & designer of various projects. He links his own paintings mainly with the nature of the North, but also with the water and its manifestations.

Seeking the boundaries of visual art, Lex has done paintings in a variety of formats from catamaran yachts, and satellite antennas to 8-storey buildings. Participated in various festivals and made murals in countries such as Norway, Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Austria, Malta, Lebanon, Spain, and Portugal and also exhibited in Austin, Texas at the Volcom Garden Art Gallery. For more information, please visit: https://lexzooz.myportfolio.com/.

Nuno Viegas, also known as Metisone, is a Portuguese artist born in Faro (1985) and raised in Quarteira. Founder of the art collective Policromia Crew, he started his artistic journey through graffiti in 1999.

Nuno presents us with a contrast between the visually aggressive and sometimes dirty reality of traditional graffiti and its peaceful and clean representation in his works. The approach of this theme is a continuous tribute to all those who dedicate part of their lives to this movement.

In 2016 Nuno worked with Street Art Today in Amsterdam which launched the artist into the Street Art scene, quickly catching the attention of Urban Nation Berlin – Museum of Contemporary Urban Art.

In 2021 Nuno Viegas started developing projects with Underdogs Gallery, the main Portuguese gallery dedicated to Contemporary Urban Art. For more information, please visit: https://nunoviegas.pt/.

Rita Ravasco, born in Mourão, 1989. Visual artist working with illustration, painting, video, stopmotion, drawing, murals and sculpture. In addition to scratchers, she uses in her work found objects, or acquired in second-hand markets. Her creative process works like a factory where there are several employees, each with a different visual expression. Her pieces are created by different “Me’s”, as if we identified several factory operators, even if they are all different, there is a camouflaged connection/line between them that denounces being created in the same factory.

Her career includes several collective and individual exhibitions, collaboration with illustration for magazines and newspapers, such as Sábado magazine, and participation in several editions of the Loures Arte Publica Festival, Iminente 2022 Festival, Boom 2022 Festival, among other challenges. For more information, please visit: https://rravasco.wixsite.com/ritaravasco/shop-1.

Internationally acclaimed artists SNIK combine the creation of hand-cut, multilayered stencils with haunting, ethereal portraiture, born from a male/ female dual perspective.

This traditional-craft, progressive-ethos approach has seen the duo commissioned on walls the world over; their post-industrial scenes loom large over passersby in locations as diverse as Aberdeen (Scotland), Stavanger (Norway), Miami and Hong Kong.

To date, SNIK has created work for: HK Walls, Nuart Aberdeen & Stavanger, Urban Nation Museum Facade, Urban Nation One Wall Project, Le Mur mural project (Paris), Straat Museum (Amsterdam), Miami RAW project, Cities of hope (Manchester), Cheltenham paint festival, Rockpoint Leisure mural for Brighton Street Art – regeneration project, Memorie Urbane Italy, London Calling Blog (London). For more information, please visit https://snikarts.com/.

Born in Lisbon (1983), THECAVER is a multidisciplinary artist who began his career with illegal graffiti in 1998. The streets remain his favorite place of work, but the artist is also taking his art to galleries, and public and private spaces. Recognisable from a distance, his work can be seen as a simple and harmonious composition, yet intricate with simple, colorful and audacious forms, often with an enigmatic theme and surrealist, figurative and abstract approaches. For more information, please visit https://thecaver.bigcartel.com/.

Also part of this program is a Community Session at the Municipal Urban Center in Bensafrim, Rua Mestre Romão, on October 8, with local residents, in order to define the painting of a mural in the same neighborhood between October 9 and 13, with the artist Mariana Santos.

On the weekends of October 21, 22, 28 and 29 (Sat and Sun) there will also be an intermediate level Stencil Workshop with BIGOD, at the LAC facilities, and from October 23 to 27 the same artist will be in the municipality's schools.

ARTURb is a concept of art on tour and national and international artistic exchange based on participatory presence, local experience and coexistence. This event makes possible: the exchange of ideas, the presentation of new concepts, the confrontation of aesthetic and cultural realities, the unusual experience and the free circulation of art. ARTURb’s objective is to create decentralisation synergies between talent and artistic participation, in order to encourage and add value to cultural tourism in the city of Lagos.

For more information, please visit LAC’s website, https://lac.org.pt/arturb/ where you can read more about the unique project ARTURb. LAC also has an interactive map on Google, which can be accessed here: https://l1nk.dev/k4Ytf.