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UNUSUALLY FOR A man known by his teenage graffiti tag and for his art rather than his own image, Maser is back in Dublin and is speaking about his work.
He’s just finished a talk alongside Paul O’Connell, Roz Purcell and two other well-known names as part of the WH Culture Collective. That’s a former Miss Ireland and Ireland rugby captain he’s just shared a PR stage with.
It’s a semi-corporate public appearance that may seem at odds with the perception one has of the internationally prolific street artist. So is that something he’s comfortable with?
“Maybe that’s coming with age. I’m 35 now and I’m getting a little bit more comfortable with it and knowing myself more and what I do. You know you can express as much as you can with your work, but it’s also nice to be able to give people some insight into why you do it. Your motivations and reasons and stuff.”
He admits he has been somewhat reluctant though partly because, as most people would testify to, “Dublin is so small”.
He doesn’t think publicity will affect his work though. Keeping work and personal lives separate is something people try and do in every walk of life, he says.
“If you want to know me, you can Google me.”
Exhibition
The talk isn’t the only reason Maser is in town. He’s also around for his debut show in the Graphic Studio Gallery which opened last week.
The show has nearly 20 fine art prints of his original work. There are woodblock prints, copper plated etching and some 3D works.
In many ways it’s a stripped down exhibition for someone who has exhibited at Palais de Tokyo and was the primary artist at Sydney’s New Year’s Eve festival.
It’s even further from when he was 15 and was spray painting Dublin’s walls with stencils, something he says he did “fanatically” in the mid-1990s.
“The graffiti I would describe it as would be abstract typography.”
Skewing letterforms and I was pretty good at that I must admit. I painted a lot and travelled a lot and did a lot of that.
It’s from skewing letterforms that he got developed the Maser tag that’s become his artist name and even his nickname among friends.
Maser says he always wanted his street work to “stress the importance of self-evaluation” and that he’d “always think about the traffic going by” as he painted it.
“It was about interrupting the landscape,” he says as he reflects on people going to work noticing a new mural he’d painted.
As Maser’s street art became more professional and defined, it developed through collaborations like his long-standing one with another tall Dublin bruiser, the musician Damien Dempsey.
The positivity of Dempsey’s message in songs like It’s All Good echoes the mood that’s been the hallmark of Maser’s work around the city they both so obviously adore.
These good vibes as Dempsey might put it are perhaps no clearer expressed in any of Maser’s work than in his use of the ♥ symbol.
That symbol and Maser’s use of it as part of the Repeal The 8th campaign brought him a wider more political audience earlier this year. But that wasn’t the reason he first started leaving ‘Maser ♥ U’ signs dotted around.
The symbol itself developed when he was in his 20s and was travelling to and from Dublin while spending time in Denmark, Germany and France. Painting everywhere he went.
When he started doing the heart back here, it was more about giving people a positive distraction from the doom and gloom of Irish society at the time.
“There was a lot of bullshit, a lot of crap int the media, it was all bad news,” he says.
I didn’t really know, I was just making stickers. It’s always nice when you see it scrawled on a wall, when you see a heart, it triggers something nice.
Maser’s travelling around Europe allowed him stave off some of the longer-term wanderlust he might otherwise have shared with his peers in moving to Australia or elsewhere.
Instead, he built up a greater appreciation for home that has meant he’s currently based in east London, a short hop back. His international work though has meant that he does frequently spend periods in many other parts of the world.
“When I travel I don’t leave Dublin or Ireland, I feel like I bring it with me, you know? I’m trying to showcase this Irish guy that’s doing stuff abroad.”
So does he feel he’s representing Ireland in that respect?
Yea, I think there’s a responsibility there. Even to your work but also in how you act in other countries. You know when you’re at the events and you’re talking to people, you’re representing your country and also your city.
The wall
Maser did, however, spend two years in Arkansas. It was on one of his trips back home that he was asked by his good friend Andrea Horan of HunReal Issues to design something for the pro-choice campaign.
What she actually asked him to do was to design a graphic for a badge. He did this but then said to her: “It’d be great if I could paint this”.
The wall of the Project Arts Centre had become a kind of space for campaign art and was a canvass for a Yes Equality mural during the same-sex marriage referendum. That time by another Dublin artist Will St Ledger.
Horan looked into seeing if they could use the same space for Maser’s Repeal mural.
“She came back and said that we got the green light. It was as simple as that you know. I came in for a few days and we painted it.”
Maser says himself and a few others “bashed it out in a few hours”, but did he think about it much beforehand? It being such contentious topic in Ireland:
I was thinking a lot about it before I did it and I was thinking that it was the right thing to do. And when we did it I sort of consciously said I’m not going to do any interviews about it. I’m just going to share it and hopefully with public art people will take ownership of it and the message will spread. And it did.I could only really look at myself and my intentions and why I wanted to do it. It was even having simple conversations with my mum and my sister and it came down to my mum saying, ‘Imagine you trying to tell me what to do with my body?’
“We did the mural and we let it take a life of its own and it really did. We made it copyright-free so if people wanted to share it in their own way we made a website to download it.”
The 14 foot mural lasted just over two weeks. After about 50 complaints, but hundreds more messages of support, Dublin City Council Planning Department informed the centre that it was in violation of planning rules.
Project Arts Centre Artistic Director Cian O’Brien said that it was the first time they’d ever been given a notice for a painted mural but they agreed to take it down anyway.
For Maser, it didn’t matter that the mural was coming down. The image had already spread so widely that it had done its job and more.
I thought that was amazing. I just thought that you’re going to do yourself an injustice because now you’re giving it a second lease of life again. There were people outside protesting and people painting their faces blue. I thought it was amazing.
With public art, he explains, there’s no point being too precious about your work. How people react to it, like taking their picture beside or sending it to other people, is important as the work itself.
It’s not the first time we’ve seen this either. Joe Caslin’s mural on the corner of Dame Street and George’s Street produced a similar effect on social media.
There were objections to Caslin’s mural as well but he successfully availed of an on-street exemption that’s in place for political messaging prior to referendums.
It wasn’t completely clear that he’d get the exemption in time though, so Caslin had to take a chance and go for it.
It’s an attitude that Maser applauds and encourages.
“We have to just do it ourselves and not wait on anybody,” he says.
“You know you have to be a bit of a pioneer like that and think ‘this is what I want to do’. Like Joe did, he got such amazing space and he just went ahead and did and got it done.”
Does that mean we’ll be seeing more Maser designs as part of the Repeal the 8th campaign. He says he hopes so, but with the caveat that he doesn’t want to be bombarding people.
“We’ll see where we it goes in the next month or two.”
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I want to say this early before it gets lost in the comments. This money is not our and never will be. If the case is ruled against apple the tax gets distributed to the other EU countries not us. Apple have already paid all the tax owed under Irish law to us. Its in our interest to support apple in this as it keeps them here defends our tax regeime.
@Thomas Kearns: you could pay every apple employee a million euro and still have 7 or 8 billion euro left for schools hospitals , upgrading infrastructure such as broadband etc . It might not be our money but its worth a lot more than apple can ever give us
@johnbrady: Do you not understnad my comment? We do not receive any of this money even if Apple lose the case. At the moment we are holding it in escrow to either be released back to Apple or to be distributed to other EU states. There is no scenario here that we receive these funds.
@johnbrady: Um…… what?
@Thomas Kearns: I’d still prefer if other European governments had the money than have it sitting in the Cayman Islands for Tim Cook to brag about having.
@Fifty Shades of Sé: That sets a terrible precedent that other EU states can just reach into the private companies that are registered in other countries. Would you be happy for Germany, France, etc to just take profits from a homegrown Irish company like Kerrygroup just because we exported goods to the EU?
Also the funds have to stay within the EU and used within the EU eitherway. If they try to transfer teh funds back to the US they will have to pay additional taxes there.
@Thomas Kearns: no place for common sense on this website, even though you are 100% right
@Thomas Kearns: indeed even if the comission wins, the proceeds will likely go to other EU states. Millions have already been spent in legal fees to defend apple so end of day we are only losing money.
With that being said, our low tax regime days are numbered and tax harmonisation in the EU is just a matter of time. Government needs to find other incentives to keep FDI coming into the country, and the tax base needs to be increased and diversified.
@Thomas Kearns: Don’t waste your time trying to educate those who just can’t appreciate that foreign direct investment into Ireland and Ireland’s tax policy over the last number of decades is what has made us the economy we are. Also, and interestingly (to a few anyhow), doesn’t the fact that some of this tax would have to be distributed to other tax authorities actually prove that Ireland did nothing wrong??? If these other jurisdictions had taxing rights all along, why should Ireland have taxed the income?
@Thomas Kearns: we could steal it. I’m fairly handy with a spoon, that might help
@Thomas Kearns: you are wrong there son. Other countries could try to make claims on the money, they might even be successful in that regard so a portion of the money and yes it could be a significant portion could get redistributed but to say Ireland won’t get to keep any of the money is incorrect.
@Sean: He’s completely correct. It seems most people don’t understand the issue at hand, which is that Apple’s tax maneuvering gave it an effective tax rate of about 0.05% on its European profits. Ergo this back tax is for EU profits passed through Irish division. The only reason we’re caught up in this is because of our tax breaks. In fact, if a lot of the French and German EU big-wigs had their way, we’d be hit with a hefty fine and a unified corp tax rate.
@Gabriel Chagas: “Tax harmonization in the EU is just a matter of time”.
Ireland was given a concession regarding our corporate rates if we voted YES to Lisbon mk 2. That concession could only be removed by us in a referendum and would almost certainly be rejected by the Irish voter. If it was forced upon us it would make the result of Lisbon mk 2 invalid.
@Thomas Kearns: I’d prefer if all corporations paid their fair share of tax instead of exploiting loopholes in tax laws to avoid doing so. I think it’s terribly wrong to allow Apple to say they make iPhones here just to avoid paying taxes that they can comfortably afford to pay. The EU has been enormously generous to Ireland over the years yet we’re helping Apple to impoverish it’s member states.
@Thomas Kearns: do we receive a share
@Gabriel Chagas: and yet we worry about Brexit and worry about Trump and fail to realise the EU is going to do us the most damage.
@Thomas Kearns: Has the time for an Irexit? Seems like the EU will come after our corporation tax rate soon too
@Thomas Kearns: this not true on a number of fronts. Firstly if its deemed illegal aid was provided by the Irish state apple have not paid all the is owed in taxes to Ireland. Secondly the tax policies for funneling money through Ireland and the double Dutch loophole have been closed. Therefore this case does not defend the current Tax regime.
@Frankie J: no place for facts by the looks of these tweets.
@Thomas Kearns: erm…..no expert but, pretty sure if you sell goods and services in a country and try to funnel it through a complex set of lower rate structures in another country to avoid paying tax it’s pretty much tax evasion……
@Gerard Anthony McBride: finally someone who has common sense….praise the lord
@Thomas Kearns: then why did the Irish Government spend Irish taxes to pursue this case in the first round with the judicial system. One would imagine that Apple Corp. should pay all costs.
@Thomas Kearns: There it says 14.3 billion in UNPAID TAXES TO IRISH GOVERNMENT!
What a waste of time and money, this is a vanity project for Vestager, proof is that she waited until the very last moment to say she was going to appeal. The appeal can only be heard on a point of law, which has already been rejected by the court.
@Kevin50: complete waste of money they have no chance of winning and never did in the first place!
@Kevin50: Exactly she is going to not win this, my memory isn’t as good as it was but in 1991 EU didn’t have competition legislation like we have now, 2007 was only 5 years after Nice and can’t remember when Lisbon treaties requirements were implemented.
If she wants to look at funnelling funds have a look at Belgium, Netherlands and others. I worked in companies in finance and I can assure her allegations against Apple are small beer.
@PaulOMahoney Irish: the EU rules on State Aid have always been in the Treaties and were there when we signed up in 1973
@PaulOMahoney Irish: original EEC Treaty of 1957 had the competition and state aid rules. Nothing new about this.
@Ciaran O’Mara: May have been on paper but certainly wasn’t implemented. France for example having a lot of goods passing through remote airports add additional costs to product while subsidising French companies. One example but it was rife
If we ever need that money, now is the time!
@Mary Walshe: It’s not our money. It’s money collected through sales in other jurisdictions and simply funneled through Apple’s Irish operations. If Europe win this case and Ireland receives this money, the Irish State will be up to its neck in claims from other European countries for their share. Our proportionally small share will be eaten up with court cases and legal costs and in the long run it will cost us more than we gain. So no, we don’t need this money.
@Tommy Roche: Actually, it’s worse than I thought. As Thomas correctly points out Apple have already paid the taxes due in Ireland, so we get nothing.
@Tommy Roche: it’s funny as well. The whole basis of this case being a competition law issue and indirectly a tax issue is completely lost in all discussion.
I’m not actually sure how much would be repayable to other member states. You would have to see how Apple had written their contracts.
Can anyone actually actually clearly state why it would be repayable to other countries, we’re talking about corporation tax here not sales tax and therefore it’s residual profits that matter not where the sales were made.
One way or the other the money isn’t ours and the Commission is going to lose its case.
Good on the European Commission to Appeal , and correctly so, as Apple funnelled massive profits out of this country, and were as a result not liable to pay tax to any state, which is illegal under European law .
@Timothy Culligan: do you have any idea what you’re talking about?
It was completely legal!
@Timothy Culligan: according to the EU courts so far, it’s not illegal.
@Timothy Culligan: guess you better tell the judge who ruled in favor of Apple then. Looks like you know more about the law than them.
@Timothy Culligan: the fact that you don’t know that you can’t “funnel” profits anywhere because profits are taxed and that if you’re going to “funnel” anything it would be revenue speaks volumes as to your knowledge.
The neverending story part MMXXIV
I am no expert but, if you sell goods and services in a country, then funnel said profits through a complex set of low rate tax structures in another country to avoid paying the going rate in the place you made the money in the first place I am pretty sure it’s tax evasion.
Apple and Ireland and dont forget the OECD, this wouldnt have happened if these mammoth companies were reined in. Of course some big countries dislike distrust and try to dismantle bodies like OECD UN WTO etc. If there isnt respect for international systems all we get is, dog eat dog and some individual major world powers think they can benefit from this but no it just leads to chaos and big business taking an unfair advantage.
@Michael: those massive companies provide us with a lot of employment.
@RampantMisanthropy: But do they really need to pay tax rates at 0.005%? Does it have to be THAT low?! They may employ loads, but we really are taking the mick with just how much they get away with relative to SME’s that pay 12.5% as standard.
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