Murals pay tribute to beloved Arches
ARTIST James Klinge will brighten up a Glasgow city centre street with a new set of murals. The dab hand has begun work on three new portraits on Midland Street, beneath Glasgow Central Station.
It comes as part of city’s mural trail for which James plans to complete twelve portraits celebrating iconic venue The Arches.
“The idea behind the murals are people who have had an affiliation with The Arches in the past and or in its current status as Platform,” he said.
Restaurant and bar Platform opened in the former nightclub in 2018 after the venue shut in 2015.
Explaining the latest three mural set to appear over the next few days, James said: “I’ll be painting a guy who used to DJ at The Arches and used to go to many gigs there and two female portraits of people who have enjoyed Platform.”
The street artist, who used to work under the pseudonym of Klingatron, creates his murals using pre-cut stencils which take weeks to make.
James added: “A lot of my time in lockdown has been spent in preparation.”
The murals were all commissioned by Glasgow City Council and the artist planned to create three per year starting in 2019.
However, the coronavirus pandemic prevented any new additions last year.
“I didn’t know if it was going to happen because of Covid but thankfully I was given the green light towards the end of last year,” he added.
One of the previously completed murals included a self-portrait as an homage to James’ personal link to the venue.
“The reason I did the selfportrait was I had a solo exhibition in The Arches in 2008 called Making the Cut,” he said.
The solo exhibition showed off James’ urban landscape paintings of Glasgow, which were also made with stencils.