punkysdilemma:

It’s hard to convey how depressing Dublin was after the financial crisis, it was like the air escaping from a balloon, everything went from breakneck (and often naive) optimism to a slump shouldered depression and with it went peoples sense of pride and confidence.

In 2009 the Irish street artist/typographer Maser teamed up with songwriter Damien Dempsey for a project that responded to this gloom and involved applying Dempsey’s words to enormous murals inspired by vintage sign painting and the classic ‘Guinness Is Good For You’ advertisements. I can recall seeing them as they went up little by little and feeling that this was the real thing, a fitting response to the greed, dissillusionment and heartbreak of the crash, as a huge mural painted on an unused building site that followed the bus route to the airport declared:

“GREED IS THE KNIFE AND THE CUTS RUN DEEP”

Fittingly though, there was also messages of love to the city, declarations of ’ IM A HOMEBIRD’ and lines of poetry praising the river Liffey that runs through Dublin, an appropriate mix of defiance, regret & anger.