Galway city needs a park for street artists to work in and practice their art, but on no account should the graffitiing of private property be tolerated.
This is the view of Labour city councillor Niall McNelis, who was speaking in advance of The Big Clean Up Day event, which takes place on Saturday February 18.
Cllr McNelis is involved in the event which will seek to clean up areas that have been daubed with graffiti.
Graffiti can range from complex and imaginative mural artwork characterised by bright colours, distinctive lettering, and exotic cartoon creatures to rapidly scrawled letters and markings. This latter form is often called ‘tagging’.
While the mural works often draw praise from passers-by and can brighten up an area, tagging is viewed and comes across as vandalism and can make, in the words of Cllr McNelis, “the city and residential areas look run down and dirty”.
Cllr McNelis feels that the mural works have a place to play in city life but that tagging must not be tolerated.
“I will continue to seek a park where graffiti can be explored as an art,” he said, “but I do not think Galwegians should tolerate their private property being damaged by tagging. I encourage everyone to report to the Gardai graffiti to property.”
He said The Big Clean Up Day will clean graffiti on Whitestrand Road and on the tourist office in Salthill.
“The recent graffiti on the tourist office is an example of how brazen these vandals are with no respect to the community,” he said. “Graffiti in the city is also costing thousands to remove each year. This is an opportunity for the community to come together and get a big chunk of ugly vandalism cleaned up
