Nova Festival of Arts & Music
Nova Festival of Arts & Music launches in July featuring groundbreaking and exclusive collaborations from stars of music, visual art, theatre and film. Aside from the live music and dancing you’d expect at your usual summer festival, Nova-goers will also be treated to creative workshops, performance artists, casino fun and comedy – all within the intimate surroundings of the West Sussex countryside.
Nova really are drumming home that there’s so much art for you to sink your teeth into. It will be blowing in the wind – in the woods, human-art, staged and ad hoc. It’ll be everywhere you look and most excitingly Rankin and Damien Hirst debut their pioneering collaborative project at the festival.
Nova is the lovechild of both Katrina Larkin and Victoria Burns, who are the creative femmes behind The Big Chill Festival. Similarly to the Big C, Nova will provide festival-goers with novel daytime fringe and leftfield after hours entertainment.
“What excited us when we created the Big Chill was the opportunity to bring art outdoors, out of the galleries,” says Katrina
“Now with Nova, we want to take that a step further and bring together art from all platforms into the fields with art, music and performances from knowns and unknowns; we have got some fantastic names involved.”
We’ve picked the juiciest highlights of Nova:
Visual Art & Photography:
Rankin and Damien Hirst’s ‘Myths, Monsters and Legends’ installations feature model Dani Smith and fantasy creatures from classical civilisations, where myths and fairy tales come to life in an unmissable experience.
Sofar Sessions:
Sofar Sounds is world renowned for putting on unique, one-off gigs in private living rooms. Their hip soirées have been launchpads for new groundbreaking acts, such as their line-up this weekend. Sofar have programmed their own tent that will be decorated, yes, as a living room. All you have to do is find the door.
Unmissable live music acts include:
The Dø: Finnish-French sensation.
Ghostpoet: A brilliant, young British MC similar to Gil Scott-Heron, Roots Manuva, John Cooper Clarke and Tricky.
TunE-yArDs: Merrill Garbus is an acclaimed onewoman DIY lo-fi pop band and rate number 10 best album of 2011 by The Guardian.
Jessie Ware: vocalist for SBTRK’s ‘Right Thing To Do’, and with a new album out this summer and a voice like honey, she’s certainly one not to be missed.
Fionn Regan: former Mercury prize nominee has been described as “lost-boy romanticism guitar magic”
We Were Evergreen: Described as a ‘child-like wonderment’ and simply a joy to watch live.
Nest Collective:
Doug Fishbone, famous for filling Trafalgar Square with 30,000 bananas in 2004, brings his own brand of Adventureland Golf to Nova. Each hole on the course will be designed by a different artist, with contributions from David Shrigley, Jake Chapman, Brian Griffiths, Gary Webb, Zatorski & Zatorski, and Pete Fowler. Playing fees will go straight to Action Aid’s reconstruction efforts in Haiti.
Other festival events in a nutshell:
Award-winning screen writer Tony Grisoni (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Red Riding) explores themes of ‘landscape’, including Jem Finer’s installation. For two years Tony left a camera in a tree, and from 18,000 photographs created ‘Still’, a still image in a state of constant flux, beautiful, meditative, silent and haunting.
British film director, writer and artist Andrew Kotting screens new film, ‘This Is Our Still Life,’ and experimental filmmaker Ben Rivers shows his first feature length, Two Years at Sea. Open discussions with Finer, Kotting and Rivers chaired by Tony Grisoni.
Nova will premiere award-winning architect David Adjaye and his brother Peter Adjaye’s musical and film ‘Music for Architecture.’ Compositions of drones, pulses and beats are put together by Peter, inspired by David’s buildings, and the audio is performed live to video during the festival.
The Flicker Club is Nova’s bespoke cinema that will screen films such as Jan Svankmajer’s 1988 version of ‘Alice in Wonderland’, which will itself be accompanied by 40 performance artists and actors creating a dramatic and unique, interactive cinematic experience.
London’s The Pleasance Theatre are showcasing The Pick of the Pleasance including the Late Night Gimp Fight – which was the talk of the town at Edinburgh 2011 – Abandoman, Doc Browns, Pappy’s Max & Ivan, The Beta Males, Ginger & Black, Delete The Banjax and Sheeps.
The Battersea Arts Centre is on board with scores of theatrical goodies. Gooseparty is an intense party of sassy pseudo-fiesta funk, a high octane evening of madcap musical wildness. Plus shows Home Correspondent, Nurse Knows Best, Birds Fell from the Sky, which are all part of BAC’sacclaimed One-on-One festival.
The Pop Up Casino offers the chance to experience the thrills of roulette, blackjack and poker. Bets start as low as 10p with great prizes to be won. All profits go to The Rockinghorse Appeal.
The Wordsmithy is where you’ll find readings, debates and lectures by Charley Boorman, Rankin, Clive Arrowsmith, Tony Grisoni, Ben Rivers, Andrew Kotting, Gustave Temple (founder/editor, The Chap), Paul Trynka (2011 David Bowie biographer), Neil Palmer (author of the forthcoming Rockhunter), Peter Hancock (aka, comedian Jinx Jones) and Katy Darby (author of ‘Whores’ Asylum’).
Creative Make It! salons will instruct drawing, foraging, cooking, burlesque, photography, painting, filmmaking and millinery. London Drawing’s Anne Noble-Partridge and David Price will host life drawing sessions, using various studio-to-human dancing props. Andrew Logan is onsite demonstrating jewellery-making classes mosaics.
Nova’s beautiful self-contained English countryside site will comprise two stages, the Valley Stage and Super Nova Cocktail Bar. The Nova Arms pub in the woods is a chill-out haven serving real ales and toasties plus inventive, unusual dining courtesy of Disappearing Dining Club. Hurly Burly host their solar-powered Dining Theatre and their highly acclaimed new family puppet show Birdy, plus live acoustic sessions and jukebox songs around the piano.
Family fun includes the Teatro-Saurus high-quality children’s mask-theatre specialists, here with stalking poets, prowling postmen and secret surprises. GreenandPleasantLand are bringing their unique blend of physical theatre, live music and folk traditions for an epic adventure for audiences aged 10-upwards. The Land of the Bumblyboo is Nova’s dedicated kids’ area with face-painting, treasurehunting, mask-making, and nighttime storytelling with cocoa.
Disco:
The Super Nova Cocktail bar is the destination for late-night sweaty disco dancing, and exceptional cocktails. The fun begins on Thursday with north London house hippies Fluffy Logic filling the dancefloor with fluffy amor. Friday features Solid Steel including DJ Food, DK and Hexstatic. Soul Jazz, Shepdog, Psychemajik, Krystal Klear and Duffstep host on Saturday. Sunday afternoon is all about Norman Jay’s Good Times Sound System sunshine grooves, with A. Skillz winding the party up in style.
“Nova Festival is a realisation of a festival dream for Katrina Larkin and I, for as long as we have know each other we have been cooking it up, that’s roughly 17 years,” says Victoria.
“Katrina founded the Big Chill, and I curated the non-music elements from the beginning. Possibly the most important aspect about this event is all this entertainment is for just 5,000 people,” she adds.
Nova Festival of Music & Arts, Thurs 5 – Mon 8 July 2012, Bignor Park, Pulborough, £139 per adult, £100 students, £60 ages 13-17, under 12’s free subject to availability.
For full a programme of events, and to book tickets please visit www.novafestival.co.uk and follow @novafestival on Twitter
