This article is from page 18 of the 2013-03-05 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 18 JPG
THE mystery artists who spraypainted a large mural on the side of the Cliffs of Moher have been identified as members of a Paris-based art collective known as the Dirty EST.
A short film, depicting two people journeying through Ireland on a graffiti rampage, was released last Wednesday evening on file-sharing website Vimeo.
The video depicts one male and one female graffiti artist, named as Dirty Edoir and Mama respectively, as they journeyed from Dublin to Galway and onto Clare, completing graffiti along the way.
The video depicts a mural being completed by Dirty Edoir at an unidentified derelict site in Dublin, as well as on a railway bridge in Galway.
The largest section of the video, however, shows the couple travelling from Galway to the Cliffs of Moher where Dirty Edoir can be seen completing the controversial mural.
The video closes with a shot of the pair looking out over the Atlantic Ocean from the Lahinch Promenade.
After going live late on Wednesday evening, the video received a slew of negative comments through social media about the graffiti on the Cliffs of Moher.
The video was removed from the Vimeo website early on Thursday morning.
A number of attempts to contact members of the Dirty EST collective have failed. Indeed, the Paris-based group have taken both their Facebook and Vimeo accounts off-line over the weekend.
It now appears that the pair may have also entered the derelict Corrib Great Southern Hotel in Galway City during their rampage across Ireland.
The Cliffs of Moher also appeared on a French blog operated by Dirty Edoir and Mama, before it was removed over the weekend.
The blog, which is located at mexplo.blogspot.ie, also includes a series of pictures taken from inside the hotel. The images, which were posted by ‘Mama’ depict the interior of the hotel, including the emptied swimming pool and several images of rooms in a state of disrepair.
The hotel, which is located beside the Galway Mayo Institute of Technology (GMIT), is owned by Barrett’s Property Holdings, but has been empty for some time. GMIT had reportedly been interested in turning the former hotel into a cookery school but no firm plans have been announced to date.
Meanwhile, Limerick cleaners from Premier Industrial Cleaning and Maintenance successfully removed the graffiti from the Cliffs of Moher, in what has been dubbed as “comando cleaning”.
The group worked in harnasses above the 600-feet-high cliff for more then eight hours until the offending mural was removed.
“It is a shame that such vandalism has taken place on one of Ireland’s most famous tourist attractions. Severe penalties should be handed out through the courts for such actions. Onlookers who watched us from a distance were shocked that someone had taken such a risk to vandalise such a spot of beauty,” said Billy Marshall of the company.
“In my 21 years in business, this was the most daunting task we have had to carry out.”