After a busy month working with new and old friends it was nice to make the acquaintance of the mighty Fanakapan!
As many will know the planning for a mural can sometimes have a lead in time of months and certainly its more often the case with Nuart Aberdeen as the team both in Aberdeen and abroad work out the logistics for each artist, an even more troublesome affair due to travel restrictions and ever changing guidelines. Also the diminishing availability of smooth, non granite walls in the city centre has thrown up some challenges (we’ve painted most of them!) so this years productions were always going to be a challenge. But sometimes the perfect wall crops up just in time for the perfect artist and the NHS Health Clinic on Gerard Street proved to be a perfect example.
Over the past decade Fanakapan has worked hard to carve out his own path in the street art world with his unique metallic balloon artworks. If you take a trip to the star yard in London you’ll often find a new piece by him. Indeed he’s one of the few artists who continues to paint in the streets, venturing out with just some cans and a ladder. There’s also a simplicity to the work, free and floating off the wall but there’s layers to it too, both in process and execution. Something that seems at first quite simple is actually full of meaning and has often come from months of research and development, or maybe it’s all just hot air!
When we saw the design for his Aberdeen wall we knew it was going to be a big hit with the NHS staff. Just before arriving in Aberdeen Fan was busy finishing off a new piece in London calling for a pay rise for NHS staff, a piece which took over a month to finish due to a broken wrist. It not just balloons rising up we had to consider when working but Fanakapan but also his extracurricular pursuits like base jumping which led to said broken wrist! Although not 100% fixed Fanakapan was able to work around his injuries and pushed through the pain to get his wall finished in 4 days.
