Dundalk street artist Omin joins greyareas protest
Dundalk’s Ominous Omin recently joined a number of top Irish street artists in painted striking murals in Dublin as part of an on-going campaign to highlight Dublin City Council’s policy of removing street art.
The battle between the council and street artists began when the artists’ collective, Subset, painted a large mural in Smithfield to coincide with the visit of rapper Stormzy to the city last year.
Despite the public acclaim for the piece, the council deemed it an unauthorised development which required planning permission and ordered that it be removed, and it was subsequently painted over with grey paint.
The same thing has happened to a number of other murals created by the group, including one of Blindboy Boatclub from The Rubber Bandits and Luke Kelly, and Subset are now fighting back.
Earlier this month, they invited a number of prominent Irish artists, including the acclaimed Joe Cashlin, to become involved in the greyareaproject.
Ominous Omin, who recently undertook a project at the Long Walk in conjunction with the Dundalk BIDS Office, created a large colourful piece in Grattan Street, Dublin, which he calls ‘Swings and Roundabout’.
‘ The full expression is ‘What you lose on the swings, you make up for on the roundabouts’ so the situation is balance,’ he explains. ‘ The piece aims to continue the current conversation around the #greyareaproject and the systems surrounding large scale art in public in the hope to strike some kind of balance between the two.’