The second new collaborative mural can be found on Harley Street, back where Ardú began. Shane O’Driscoll painted the first Ardú mural on Harley Street in October 2020, he says “We never knew at that point the direction that Ardú would go. We certainly didn’t think that we’d be getting to a point where we would be repainting murals from our first year… That’s just the nature of street art and murals only have a certain lifespan.”
James Earley, Tony Byrne, and Cian Walker have been friends of the initiative since the beginning and have been painting in Cork for over 15 years. They have now completed their collaboration in the city.
Tony Byrne is a professional tiling contractor with over 15 year’s experience based out of Dublin. He runs a tiling business specialising in high end tiling and mosaic work.
For his personal art work Tony uses tiles collected and reclaimed from jobs he has worked on. His mosaic pieces are heavily influenced by his background in graffiti and street art. These mosaic pieces merge stylistic elements of graffiti lettering, combining the vibrant colours of spray paint with the materiality and structure of tile work.
James Earley (b.1981), is an Irish artist who lives and works in Dublin, Ireland. Earley’s practice is rooted in graffiti, graphic design and his family’s heritage in stained glass. He creates artworks that are timeless in their aesthetic and rich in their conceptual narrative.
Cian Walker is a Dublin-based artist who has been active in Ireland’s graffiti scene since the late 1990s. Walker has established a studio practice that attempts to bridge the gaps between abstract painting and graffiti, informed by urban architecture and the pervasiveness of digital technology. Walker’s work explores colour relationships and texture to create paintings that offer a space of contemplation. Despite the abstract nature of his work, it offers a perspective driven by emotion and intuition that attempts to capture a momentary aspect of existence, an attempt at guiding oneself through the infinite space of possibility.
Recent exhibitions include Dublin Modular’s It’s At Home series, Hang Tough Contemporary’s Páipéir exhibition, Concrete X Canvas in Ouset Gallery, Galway and Do You Dream? in The Space Between. Future exhibitions include the Xmas Show at Outset Gallery, Galway, The Winter Print Show in Hang Tough Contemporary and a live music performance at The Complex as part of Lucy Sheridan and Eleanor McCaughey’s exhibition Pay No Attention To The Man Behind The Curtain.
Speaking about the large-scale mural, they explain:
“When we first met to discuss potential ideas for this mural, we found that each of us had been exploring similar ideas, a positive sign from the get-go. We had a fruitful meeting wherein we discussed ideas of industry, geography, and the ever-changing facets of Cork as a city. Given its significant history as a thriving port city, we wanted to create a work that alludes to the River Lee, its movement and its importance to the trade of Cork, and Ireland as a whole. Utilising earthy tones offset by more vivid and vibrant colours we feel that the piece pays homage to the history of the county and its energy in moving forward as a city of cosmopolitan modernity. Hard-edged geometric shapes make reference to the urban elements of Cork City, in combination with more organic forms that suggest links to the sediment of the river and the more rural areas of the county. There are visual cues hidden within the composition, abstractions on the logos of Dunlop and Ford, for example, the water from the image on the county flag, alongside less oblique references such as the use of Cork marble in the piece, our aim was to create an exciting, stimulating mural that allows viewers to appreciate on a purely aesthetic level but also one that offers nuggets of reference and inspiration for those who wish to explore more deeply.”
Photographer Credit: Clare Keogh
