
The street art collective taking back Dublin’s walls - coffeedrop
https://www.huckmag.com/art-and-culture/art-2/meet-subset-the-street-art-collective-taking-back-dublin/
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caiocaiocaio
"With their bold ongoing project, Grey Area, Irish collective SUBSET are
protesting the criminalisation and censorship of street art."

That's all fine and good if you can paint fancy murals like that. My city is
covered it street art, and it's all just kids boringly writing their tags.

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grasshopperpurp
St. Petersburg (FL) used to be like that, but business owners started working
with artists, and then more and more businesses did the same.

[https://stpetemuraltour.com/photo-wall/](https://stpetemuraltour.com/photo-
wall/)

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dmix
You mean voluntary collaboration between property owners and artists, creating
mutually beneficial arrangements (artists get paid to do what they love, the
quality of the work improves) instead of regulation and criminalisation was
the better answer? Who would have thought.

If anything the state could incentivize certain property owners to allow their
alleyways or other areas to allow graffiti. Since the artists aren't going to
stop... so you might as well create positive environments for them.

...Just like drugs.

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Noos
You have to love newspeak; define vandalism as street art, because of what?
Some repressed desire of the harried urban knowledge worker to strike back at
the Man who forces him to live in a rabbit hutch, riding on dirty subways to
get anywhere? So very Norman Mailer.

Though formalized and approved vandalism is so very millenial as well,
legitimize the protest by calling it art and make a few vandals rich by
painting slogans the elite find friendly. It's not a bug, it's a feature!

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maaark
Can they come up to Belfast and paint over the horrible paramilitary murals?
Cheers.

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ggm
"ways to re-start a cold war, number #102: antagonise the working class troops
to make them want to throw molotov cocktails again..."

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rjrodger
Waterford is way ahead of the Dubs on this one - our council actually
commissions street art: [http://waterfordwalls.ie/](http://waterfordwalls.ie/)

All this wonderful art greets me on the way to the office every morning -
fabulous!

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CalRobert
Visited Waterford a couple weeks ago - really liked it! Shame it took me 5
years to visit; my friends here in Dublin (including a Waterford lad) said
there wasn't much reason.

TBH the greenway alone is worth a visit. Wife and I are contemplating moving
there. Next time we go I'll check out more street art.

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dmix
Let's hope Dublin doesn't do something ridiculous like NYC and pass laws which
fine property owners millions of dollars for cleaning up graffiti off their
own property... only after selling the property to be demolished for a new
development:

[https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/12/nyregion/5pointz-
graffiti...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/12/nyregion/5pointz-graffiti-
judgment.html)

I'm all for street art but this is getting a bit ridiculous when the gov
starts deciding which property owners can and can't decide to have murals
painted on the side of their buildings.

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frockington
Could they have someone "vandalize" the painting as a work around? It seems
like spray painting some "hate speech" might resolve the problem, might event
get a stipend from the city to remove it if your play our cards right

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tempodox
Some of the best art I've ever seen was sprayed on urban walls. The regular
art market is hugely overrated.

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ddoran
I love the work by Solus, a Dublin-based street artist. He does some work in
Brooklyn/NYC from time to time too

[https://solusstreetart.com/Outdoor/](https://solusstreetart.com/Outdoor/)

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toomanybeersies
Looking at that Trump mural reminded me of this brilliant Trump mural painted
around the corner from my place in Melbourne:
[https://imgur.com/nIgsvs3](https://imgur.com/nIgsvs3)

Melbourne has an absolutely amazing street art scene. I'm not sure how they
managed to cultivate it, so that it isn't just mindless tagging all over the
city (like my hometown).

I used to shrug off street art as a serious art form, but having spent more
time with creatives recently, including several graffiti artists, I've come to
really appreciate it. If a city tries to curb legitimate street art, as
opposed to tagging and vandalism, then all a city will have is tagging and
vandalism.

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mprev
Presumably the Stormzy piece was an expression of their love for Grime music
rather than an ad for the upcoming concert.

~~~
lucideer
It was an ad (though the two aren't mutually exclusive I guess). It's not made
very clear in the article, but SUBSET (formerly Rabbit Hole Productions) are a
commercial entity - as Rabbit Hole I've seen ads by them for things like
recruitment agencies and Hollywood movies.

Grey Area does appear to be a non-commercial (if self-promotional) project.

I'm also surprised the Maser Repeal mural hasn't been mentioned, as it's a
similar story: this is a mural that was commissioned by a theatre in Dublin on
the theatre's wall in support of the abortion referendum campaign. It was
first removed due to a lack of planning permission; after they acquired proper
planning permission it was later removed after a complaint by the charity
regulator that it violated the theatre's stated charitable purpose and would
lose them their charitable status. It finally got a third iteration on the
wall of Amnesty International Ireland nearby.

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crawfordcomeaux
It's nice to see peaceful artistic anarchy at play.

