Street art breathes life into inner cities, so why are councils trying to strangle it?
Where did the Pink Lady mural go, my son asked... it broke the rules, I said
WE moved house a couple of months ago. We painted the place white and hung pictures, but the big upstairs hallway still looked astonishingly bare.
We needed something big and bold up here to give the place an energy injection. But what?
It turned out I had been walking past the answer every day for the past few months. On the way to my son’s playschool, painted on the corner of a narrow laneway in Rathmines, Dublin, was a massive, five and a half metre image of a beautiful girl with cornrows in her hair – a singer as photographed in a recent magazine – transformed by the application of a pink glaze from a trendy portrait into an ethereal meditation on the multifaceted notions of modern femininity.
At least, that’s how I saw it. My son had a simpler understanding. It was the Pink Lady.
And although viewing her entailed a detour of five minutes every morning and evening, we had to walk past the Pink Lady every day, or face a pavement shaking bout of foot stamping (and possible casting of scooter to the floor) from our rather tyrannical youngest child.
I can hardly explain the sadness on his face when we turned the corner one day, looked up – and the Pink Lady was gone. Someone had painted her grey.
‘Where has the Pink Lady gone?’ asked my son.
IDIDN’T know, but was determined to find out for him. It turns out that the Pink Lady was the work of Subset, a Dublin-based collective of creatives who, as well as street art, labour in fields as diverse as product design, promotions and advertising.
I invited myself over to their HQ, which they said was above an old church in Rathgar.
I imagined a draughty old ecclesiastical garret filled with lecterns, candelabras and spray paint on the walls. But in fact, the Subset HQ is pure contemporary hipster: polished concrete, bespoke furniture made by their mates, gleaming iMacs and a well-stocked bar.
One thing I had been right in assuming however, was the temperature. It was so chilly that the company’s CEO – who, like all other members of the collective prefers to remain anonymous – wore a dressing gown for our chat. My first and most pressing question was the same as my son’s: What happened to the Pink Lady? Why did she turn into a boring grey wall?
The reply, delivered with a voice clearly weary of repeating the same story over and over again, left me aghast.
What happened was what has happened a hundred times to Subset; the council wrote a letter to the owner of the wall (who had, incidentally, given permission for it to be used and loved the mural) and told them that as they had not applied for planning permission to display the mural, it had to go within 28 days or they’d be looking at a five-figure fine.
Now, just to put this into context, while Rathmines may not be the shabbiest part of Dublin, it’s hardly Merrion Square. Pound shops jostle for space with discount supermarkets and convenience stores. There appears to be a fluid understanding of the appropriate day to leave one’s rubbish bags out, and the necessity of paying to tag them.
And the wall itself that Subset decorated was a mess.
‘The wall was in a really bad state before we painted it,’ says a spokesperson for Subset. ‘It was covered in tags. We put what 99% of people thought was a beautiful piece of art there, and that’s somehow worse than leaving it looking like s***?
‘It just doesn’t make sense. As a city, Dublin promotes itself as a cultural destination, yet you try and do anything creative and they close you down. It’s mad.’
A spokesperson for Dublin City Council confirmed they would enforce the ‘removal’ of any murals done without planning permission (which pretty much means all the city’s street art). Asked in a follow-up email if they could make any allowance for works of art which enhanced the environment, DCC issued a further statement, saying: ‘Dublin City Council has trialled the concept of legal walls for street art and is open to proposals. Previously consent/permissions have been withdrawn due to additional tagging of the general area and anti-social behaviour. Painting late at night etc. The implementation of a legal wall would require permission of the owner, consent of the council, consultation with local businesses and residents.
THEY are normally curated or managed by a street artist within guidelines and are painted out once a year. They are prohibited from having commercial content or any content which may be considered discriminatory. Each is case-specific, due to location and access required as well as health and safety.’
It was in reaction to what Subset see as heavy-handed enforcement of the rules that they recently painted over one of their pieces with a huge monotone image of Donald Trump, with the slogan, ‘Make Dublin Grey Again.’
Of course, nobody would dispute that DCC should be painting over offensive or aggressive graffiti, and that all street art is ultimately ephemeral.
If significant numbers of people complained or found something offensive, it would be hard to argue that a piece should stay, but the work of modern street artists is far removed from 1980s gang markings.
Subset’s objection to street art being subject to the whim of officials in the planning department – rather than say, someone with knowledge of the arts – seems reasonable.
We are, thanks in large part to the British street artist Banksy, whose works now change hands for hundreds of thousands of euro, in an era where street art is no longer regarded exclusively as a public nuisance and there’s clearly a larger conversation to be had about how we value street art.
As the Dublin gallerist Oliver Sears told the Irish Daily Mail: ‘While street art has evolved from the often random and anarchic impulses of Eighties graffiti to the refined and sophisticated political statements of highly-skilled artists, awareness of visual culture in Ireland is, at best, at a standstill.
‘The lack of Government funding for public galleries and arts programmes is well documented. However, the internet age has transformed how we communicate as a species from a largely vocal and aural language to an overwhelmingly visual and pictorial one.
IT’S images that grab us more than slogans. The best of street art rhymes with this visual currency and the transformation of a wall into a piece of art, accessible to the public, is nothing less than a manifestation of freedom of expression.
‘If the public approve of the work then the city council should commission the artists responsible to transform other less salubrious parts of the city.
‘In a time of growing illiberalism in a number of western democracies, these public displays of creativity serve to remind us how easy it would be to clamp down on all free speech – and how our democratic rights are gossamer thin.’
Indeed, the wind of change appears to be blowing, globally, in favour of more street art rather than less.
A New York judge recently awarded $6.7million to graffiti artists who sued after their work was destroyed on buildings torn down to make room for luxury apartments.
Twenty-one aerosol artists sued the owner of a Long Island City, Queens site known as 5Pointz.
Their graffiti was ruined with a surprise overnight whitewash of the building on the orders of the owner in 2013, and the buildings were torn down a year later.
But, back to where this all began; our hallway.
It is now the proud owner of a remarkable mural inspired by native Irish trees which we commissioned Subset to paint for us (at market rates).
We love it. Although I think my son would have preferred the Pink Lady.