NEXT TO THE Workshop on Tara Street there’s a really impressive mural – you pretty much can’t miss it. It’s a gigantic, 3D red squirrel which, on close inspection, you’ll spot is made out of rubbish.
The mural went up last year, and is the work of world-renowned street artist Artur Bordalo, aka Bordalo II.
Bordalo, who is Portuguese, has created works of art like these all over the world, taking scrap and rubbish and turning it into something beautiful.
According to Bordalo’s website, his motivation is the consumerism all around us, and the phrase “one man’s trash is another man’s treasure”.
I create, recreate, assemble and develop ideas with end-of-life material and try to relate it to sustainability, ecological and social awareness.
The squirrel on Tara Street was chosen to highlight the plight of this native animal on our shores – the red squirrel is under threat, and risks extinction thanks to its brasher, nastier relative the grey squirrel.
The mural is absolutely deadly, and even after gracing the street for a year it’s still one of the most eye-catching works of art in the city.
Bordalo has kept up his Trash Animals project and has travelled around the world to do it. Most recently, he unveiled this impressive mother and baby bear statue in Fundação Gulbenkian, Lisbon, just in time for Earth Day.
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