\u201cI WISH they\u2019d come to me, I\u2019d have given them something useful to do,\u201d said artist Gala Hutton of the vandals who sprayed black tags over his love-themed mural along the Burrin river in Carlow town. \u201cIt was meant to be a walk-through experience and now they’ve obviously decided to add to it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Gala completed the brightly-coloured mural last year and was mildly impressed that it took this long for it to be vandalised. \u201cIt’s been doing really well. It was untouched until recently,\u201d he noted, crediting the locals who have been keeping an eye on it.<\/p>\n
Online, people were less calm about the appearance of meaningless tags on a piece of community art, calling it \u2018rotten\u2019 and \u2018disgraceful.\u2019 Matt Cocci, chairperson of Carlow tidy towns committee, said the group was \u201cfrustrated\u201d at the appearance of yet more vandalism.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve been fighting graffiti forever, it’s a never-ending battle,\u201d he said. The group regularly cleans and paints over graffiti in the town and along the Barrow track, a hotspot for spray painters.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s disheartening for any artist or community to see a mural defaced like this,\u201d he said. Matt is even considering installing a PVC artwork in a new community garden, which can be replaced if it is vandalised, rather than deal with potential graffiti. \u201cThe community and the council want to beautify the areas. But at the back of our heads, we’re thinking \u2018are we going to put the time and effort just for a kid to come around with a spray can\u2019?\u2019\u2019 He described the graffiti artists as having \u201cno respect for their community. I can\u2019t understand why teenagers get a kick out of it. We\u2019ve got to give them an outlet. If we had a wall designated as part of the skate park, then there\u2019s no reason for them to go anywhere else.\u201d He pointed to the graffiti art workshops available during Carlow Arts Festival that encourage young people to hone their craft rather than replicate meaningless tags.<\/p>\n
Because it is difficult for garda\u00ed to identify or charge the young people who commit this form of criminal damage, Matt suggested that the community, instead, should come together and call out the perpetrators. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cI WISH they\u2019d come to me, I\u2019d have given them something useful to do,\u201d said artist Gala Hutton…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":253494,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[307,304,305,306,308,93,61,60],"class_list":["post-253493","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-artsdesign","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253493","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=253493"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253493\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/253494"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=253493"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=253493"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=253493"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}