SUBSET give a special send off to much loved Kendrick Lamar during his Dublin visit

Most artist that come to play in the Three Arena fly in and out within hours of their gig, not Lamar. He decided to cruise around the streets of Dublin, get a few workouts in and get to appreciate the city. He played a flawless sell out gig and left a serious impression on Irish soil in more than more way and SUBSET gave him a little gift of their own. On Aungier street, above a hair studio, now sits a mural of the artist in his element illuminated by colors of red and white, cleverly painted by the art group to appear like street lights. SUBSET were contacted by Universal Music and requested to produce an art piece to welcome the star to Dublin. It took them a total of 11 hours which they did the night before the concert. Word got around so quickly that Lamar gave the group a shout out at the end of his gig in the Three Arena on Wednesday night.

I’m sitting in TwoFifty coffee shop in Rathmines, somewhere I have never been, waiting for someone I do not know. I see a person enter with a tracksuit on that is covered in sprays of paint and on arrival he quickly reaches for his phone which is when my phone rings. We look at each other and so the conversation starts.

“We don’t want people talking about us as individuals, we’re not about any one person. A lot of people these days have public profiles which they use to push their company, collective, brand whatever it is, whereas we like to push our content through one entity; SUBSET.”

SUBSET are responsible for the pockets of colour and creativity that you have been seeing popping up around Dublin city centre in the past few years in the form of a variety of art work. They are responsible for the controversial Stormzy mural in Smithfield which recently got removed, they are responsible for the mural in the gym of Conor McGregor, where he is shown knocking out his opponent Floyd Mayweather. They are responsible for the fairly new Donald Trump mural in Andrews Lane which reads; ‘Make Dublin Grey Again,’ and they are responsible for turning those dull walls in Ranelagh, Stoneybatter and surrounding areas into bright and stimulating artwork. They don’t do all of their work through the night, a lot of their outdoor graffitti work is done in broad daylight over a period of a few hours, depending on the size of the work.

SUBSET are 7 artists from Dublin that are creating content around the city to not only reignite the creative flame that is deep within the culture of this country but to encourage creativity and freedom of expression within Ireland. 5 and a half years ago a couple of people set up Rabbit Hole Promotions which over the past 18 months has evolved into SUBSET. They are 7 Dubliners who are producing content ranging from art, marketing, music and film to hospitality and clothing, and for the majority of their existence, they’ve been doing it of their own accord.

Their first big jump into the spotlight was their ‘Stormzy’ mural which was painted onto the side of a grey brick property in Smithfield reaching over 5 metres in height. It appeared in the spring of 2017 and remained there for nearly 6 months, getting a lot of positive attention from not only locals but tourists too. It was a still life mural of the artist wearing a red Adidas jumper holding his hands up in the prayer symbol and was completed just before his debut performance in the Olympia theatre in Dublin.
I didn’t even know who Stormzy was until I saw the mural plastered over the internet.

“We produced this piece primarily because we like him and his music but also because he is closely associated with our culture. Stormzy would have been told multiple times by multiple different record labels and producers that his music wasn’t going to work and that he had to change his look and sound, to fit in with the market, but he didn’t, he kept up with the graft, and so will we.”

The Stormzy idea was created over a 12 day period and produced from iphone images to wall, in just 5 days. “We don’t have projectors, stencils or superimposed images, everything we do is from the screen of an iphone.” Some time in November SUBSET received a letter from Dublin City Council asking them to remove the mural. Apparently 3 complaints were made by people living in the surrounding area, and unfortunately they didn’t have planning permission. All they had was the permission from the owner of the building.
Planning permission for anything with a visual impact on the general public can take anywhere ranging from 3-6 months for approval alone, according to Dublin City Council.

SUBSET tell me that it is €20 per s/m to make an application, for something deemed as advertising, in Dublin city. ‘We don’t have that kind of money (yet) we are still a startup. But we feel we are producing artwork for the better of the city. We are not into advertising unless it’s something we agree with, outside of that, we just want to produce artwork to generate thought. If we were to apply for planning for our Stormzy piece it could have come to €4,500 for the application alone, and that’s before we even start production.’ The Stormzy piece is now gone forever and has been replaced with its original form, a large grey wall. A lot of people think that the council removed the art work but it was actually SUBSET who removed it.

With that, my flat white is placed in front of me revealing a beautiful leaf design. As I remark on it’s beautiful appearance I see the person in front of me staring at it - “there is art everywhere.’

Before Conor McGregor flew out of Ireland to fight Floyd Mayweather at the MGM Grand hotel in Las Vegas, Conor’s coach John kavanagh contacted SUBSET and asked them to paint a mural on the wall of his gym to inspire him. “What’s more inspiring than training beside a mural of yourself knocking out your opponent?”

SUBSET then had to gather images of McGregor and Mayweather separately and create an image of the two of them which was going to look and feel realistic.

“The problem with that was, once we had developed the idea and produced the graphic, we were told we had 12 hours to produce it because Conor was only leaving the gym to go home and sleep and then return the next day to train. Just two of us completed that mural over night, by hand, with an image on an iphone. I don’t believe there is anyone else in the world that could have pulled that project off.”

I asked SUBSET if they would consider going abroad to somewhere like London, Amsterdam, Berlin or Paris where their work would perhaps be more appreciated and surely a lot easier in terms of licences and permits, he replied; “Why would we go abroad? We are from Dublin, we love Dublin and this is where we want our work to happen. Even if we get stopped, at least we will have helped lay the foundation, or pave the way, for the next SUBSET, artist or collective that decides to start a movement in Dublin.”

I’m told they don’t have any plans to be silenced by the challenges they are facing with Dublin City Council; ‘It’s just a speed bump. We’d rather not have to slow down, but at the end of the day, we are still going over that speed bump one way or another.” SUBSET do not consider DCC their enemy; ‘it’s not a ‘us versus them’ situation, we’ve sat down with them before and tried to come to a mutual agreement but it’s hard. We want one thing, they want another, but it’ll work itself out, in the meantime we’re just going to keep going.’ The funny thing about all of this is, SUBSET are actually working on two different projects for the Council right now, filling two different spaces in the public realm around Dublin.
How can you move forward I ask.
“We want to have a licensing agreement put in place that would fast track the planning process, DCC are the only ones that can make it happen but it’s possible because it happens in the UK and in other countries.”

In 2017 SUBSET had just over 120 productions, in their various formats, and I am pretty sure 2018 is set to be a whole lot busier for them. When I asked what the future of SUBSET is he said; ‘We want to build our collective here because we want our work to be for Dublin City, our City. We are very driven by transforming Dublin and creating a better country, one that people from all around the world come to visit.”

When I ask if they have a specific clientele and won’t accept commissions from an organisation they don’t agree with, he tells me it’s a decision. They won’t accept any old offer, or not at least without putting their spin on it. A home owner in Smithfield asked the group to do a mural on the side of his house but they didn’t like his idea. So they said they would only do it if they had creative control over the project. Now what stands on the side of that house is a painting of a boy on a white horse. The image was taken by an Australian photographer that came to visit Dublin during the Smithfield horse market. The image is beautiful, it was the first mural by SUBSET I had ever seen, I was walking back to my brothers apartment with him after seeing Fleet Foxes in the Iveagh Gardens. It was one of the nicest days of the summer. I’ll never forget stopping to stare at the mural and wondering who the young boy was.