Irish illustrator Joe Caslin has just completed a two-mural campaign this spring in Dublin’s city center on the side of a castle in Co Galway in support of this May’s country-wide same-sex marriage referendum. At the end of decades of activism by many in the LGBT community, these giant murals may have helped to sway the outcome – they certainly resulted in a lot of attention on social media and even the front page of the International New York Times.
The image on the side of the seven story Mercantile building was inspired by Meeting on the Turret Stairs, the sorrowful passing of unrequited lovers depicted by Fredric William Burton’s in his1864 painting. Wind and rain quickly damaged the pasted paper version of his hand-drawn illustration, but not before it was recorded and parlayed across mobile devices and television screens.
Far away from the city and surrounded by cows grazing in bucolic pastures, Caslin’s second illustration, this time featuring two lovely young women in an embrace, was affixed with potato-starch based paste onto the façade of a grand structure, the Caherkinmonwee Castle in Co Galway. If you were looking for a more fitting frame for your portrait, you would be hard pressed to beat this one and Joe once again proves that location and context is king (or queen).
Our weekly focus on the moving image and art in the streets. And other oddities.
Now screening: Joe Caslin on Achill-Henge in Ireland, Canemorto with Borondo in Bologna, Italy.
BSA Special Feature: Joe Caslin
on Achill-Henge in Ireland
BSA Film Friday this week brings you exclusive photos and film documentation of the new “collaboration” of an Irish Street Artist and a renegade real estate developer. For the next chapter of his socio-political Street Art project “Our Nation’s Sons”, artist Joe Caslin has an unmatched choice for a venue – an illegally constructed concrete sculpture called Achill-Henge.
Banksy had Toilet-Henge, in Nevada Jim Reinders created Carhenge, and this unauthorized 30 column, fifteen foot high tribute to Stonehenge has been under threat of demolition since it was erected one November weekend two years ago unilaterally by property developer ‘Anglo Avenger’ Joe McNamara, according to news reports.
A perfect spot for graffiti and Street Art, right?
Enter Joe Caslin, the recently graduated illustration artist who completed his public awareness campaign “Our Nations Sons” that we shared with you earlier this year on the streets of Edinburgh, Scotland. The contentious discussions that surround the existence of the massive sculpture as well as the fact that it is still standing makes it a superb location to wheatpaste the images of young men whom Caslin believes are callously demonized within Irish society. “It is a really controversial site which is loaded with opinion and as such was very important to the subject matter of my drawings,” says the artist.
Mr. Caslin and his small team, at least one of which is a participating subject of the campaign, have just completed a full installation on the walls of this poured concrete Achill-Henge high atop the wind-whipped hills overlooking the ocean.
The installation continued late into night and there were of course a number of technical issues to overcome but today BSA readers get to see exclusive photos of the project – along with a pretty stunning professionally shot video just released of the full installation.
And on an entirely different tip, the wild and wooly lowfi classical Canemorto continue to impress with their raw wit. Why aren’t more people talking about Canemorto? This new stop action video by El Pacino features a collab with Borondo in an abandoned building with a soaring roof. Also, idiot sounds.