I DISCOVERED THE EVENT IN MAY 2016
THE LEGACY CATALOG
* In The Year 2008
* In The Year 2011
* In The Year 2017
* Henrietta Back In 2010
Waterford Walls From 2015 To August 2026 Festival
I plan to spend a week in Waterford and I hope to find and photograph all new murals.
I visited Waterford in May 2016 and was unaware of Waterford Walls - I did see a few posters but paid no real attention. Looking back at my old catalog I found photographs of "About The Girl" at Newgate Street. Since then the structure has been demolished.
The mural "About A Girl" on Newgate Street holds a unique place in the history of the festival. It was executed during the very first edition of Waterford Walls in August 2015.
The Artist: Steve Kemp (KEMP)
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Profile & Style: Steve Kemp is a Dublin-based street artist, printmaker, and gallerist (founder of the KEMP Gallery on South William Street/GalleryX setups in Dublin). He is known in the Irish street art scene for his multi-layered stencil work, retro graphic design, and pop-art sensibilities.
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Role in Irish Street Art: Beyond his own studio and mural work, Kemp played a crucial role in mentoring the younger generation of Irish street artists—for instance, Waterford muralist Caoilfhionn Hanton learned street art fundamentals while interning with him.
The Artwork: "About A Girl" & The Subject
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Inspiration: The piece is part of Kemp’s signature series exploring pop culture, stencil layering, and graphic female portraiture.
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Is the girl a specific person? The subject was not a specific, named individual or local personality, but rather an idealised, stylised portrait generated through layered stencil techniques. Kemp frequently used classic cinema stills, fashion photography, and vintage imagery as raw source material to build his multi-pass stencils, focusing on emotional mood rather than a celebrity likeness.
The Location & Demolition: Changes to Newgate Street
- The loss of "About A Girl" reflects the rapid transformation of the area over the past decade:
History of the Event
rigins (2014–2015): Founded by Edel Tobin under The Walls Project CLG, the initiative launched to address urban decay and dereliction in Waterford following the post 2008 economic crash. The goal was to use public art as a catalyst for urban regeneration.
Expansion: Starting as a small local paint jam, it quickly scaled into a multi-day festival every August. By 2021, the festival encompassed county towns like Tramore, An Rinn, and Tallow alongside its urban city core.
Current Scale: The festival now spans 10 days, drawing over 40 to 70 national and international artists each year and hosting live painting, workshops, guided tours, and film screenings.
Local & International Impact
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Local Success:
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Urban Renewal: Converted weather-worn, blank gables and derelict industrial walls into an open-air gallery, particularly revitalizing O'Connell Street, The Glen, and the Cultural Quarter.
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Community Pride: Replaced non-commissioned tagging with protected artworks while offering youth graffiti workshops, public talks, and family street parties.
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Economic Footfall: Drives year-round domestic foot traffic, benefiting local hospitality, cafes, and retail through self-guided audio/digital map trails.
International Success:
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Global Network: Partnered with Street Art Cities, placing Waterford on the global street art map alongside major urban hubs like Berlin, Melbourne, and Bogota.
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Artist Prestige: Attracts world-renowned talent (Fintan Magee, Telmo Miel, VILE, Dan Kitchener), making it one of Western Europe's premier mural festivals.
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Cultural Exchange: Acts as a key platform for Irish artists to collaborate directly with global muralists, raising the profile of Irish street art internationally.
The 2026 lineup for Waterford Walls features a strong, diverse mix of major international heavyweights alongside a substantial domestic contingent.
International Artists
Zabou (France)
- Style & Career: Based in London, Zabou is internationally renowned for her striking, high-contrast figurative realism. She uses spray paint to blend portraits of real, expressive humans with bold color fields and graphic components.
- Key Visuals: Highly detailed portraits featuring dramatic side-lighting and emotional intensity.
VILE (Portugal)
- Style & Career: Rodrigo Miguel (VILE) is famous for his mind-bending 3D transparent/cut-out graffiti technique. Using precise shading, stencil work, and perspective tricks, he renders his name as if it were carved directly through solid concrete walls, revealing the empty background space behind them.
TELMO MIEL (Netherlands)
- Style & Career: The artistic duo Telmo Pieper and Miel Krutzmann are globally celebrated for their large-scale surrealist photo-realism. They fuse layered imagery, overlapping human forms, and dreamlike elements into a single cohesive piece.
MR CENZ (UK)
- Style & Career: A staple of the London street scene since 1988, Mr Cenz creates distinctive futuristic female portraits. His signature aesthetic blends classic graffiti lettering, photorealistic faces, neon hues, and abstract translucent flow-lines.
MR.DHEO (Portugal)
- Style & Career: Self-taught artist known for hyper-realistic narrative portraiture. His work often tackles political commentary, pop culture, and social critique with crisp lines and dramatic contrasts.
Fintan Magee (Australia)
- Style & Career: Frequently referred to as "the Australian Banksy," Magee is a world-class muralist whose work explores social issues, climate change, migration, and the working class.
- Key Visuals: Large, painterly figures rendered with soft light, atmospheric texture, and water reflections.
Dan Kitchener / DANK (UK)
- Style & Career: DANK is legendary for his atmospheric cinematic street scenes, particularly rainy, neon-soaked nightscapes of Tokyo, Hong Kong, and London.
- Key Visuals: Wet pavement reflections, glowing light blurs, and dramatic rain effects rendered with incredible speed using spray paint.
L7MATRIX (France/Brazil)
- Style & Career: Known for combining raw graffiti lettering with fine-art realism. His most famous subjects are hyper-vibrant, exploding birds and animals that seem to dissolve into dynamic splatters, lines, and movement.
Fio Silva (Argentina)
- Style & Career: Dynamic, organic murals featuring wild birds, flora, and fauna. Her style relies on heavy black line work, bold color blocking, and sweeping lines that flow along the architecture of the wall.
DAN FERRER (Spain)
- Style & Career: Ferrer’s work blends figurative realism with allegory and childhood symbolism. He often depicts larger-than-life children breaking through limitations or exploring dream worlds.
CONSE (Spain)
- Style & Career: Master of hyper-realism and portraiture. He focuses heavily on capturing subtle skin textures, deep expressions, and intimate human moments on massive scales.
SPEKER (Italy) & SILYME (Italy)
- Style & Career: Traditional graffiti writers turned muralists who specialize in technical wildstyle lettering, sharp geometric angles, dynamic color gradients, and complex letter construction.
NOL (Netherlands)
- Style & Career: Distinctive for his whimsical, retro-cartoon character designs. NOL uses bold black outlines, playful narrative themes, and bright primary colors.
ADOR (France)
- Style & Career: Illustrative, satirical, and story-driven. ADOR creates imaginary worlds populated by quirky, long-nosed humanoid characters engaged in chaotic or humorous scenarios.
KMG (Scotland)
- Style & Career: Illustrative street artist known for her cheeky, humorous, and bold character-based work that frequently pokes fun at modern society and pop culture.
WRN (Brazil) & MARIE (Brazil)
- Style & Career: Bringing South American tropical street aesthetics, rich patterns, and vibrant color palettes rooted in Brazilian urban culture.
Irish & Northern Irish Artists
DAN LEO (Ireland)
- Style & Career: One of Ireland's most recognizable street artists. Dan Leo's work is characterized by heavy black outlines, sharp geometric partitioning, and vibrant graphic depictions of animals and wildlife.
ROB HILKEN (Northern Ireland)
- Style & Career: Belfast-based artist and curator whose work focuses on geometric abstraction, color field theory, and structural symmetry that interacts with urban architecture.
SHANE HA (Ireland)
- Style & Career: Galway-born visual artist (often signing as Torc_art) whose style blends illustrative geometry, Celtic knotwork elements, and modern pop-surrealist characters.
RASK (Ireland)
- Style & Career: A veteran of the Irish graffiti scene, Rask is renowned for his technical prowess in classic lettering, complex wildstyle, and large-scale collaborative pieces.
SOAK (Ireland)
- Style & Career: Longstanding Irish writer and muralist known for versatile lettering, character design, and heavy involvement in the grassroots national graffiti scene.
STAYLO (Ireland)
- Style & Career: Focuses on contemporary lettering, bold color choices, and clean vector-like spray execution across urban landscapes.
MUL (UK/Ireland)
- Style & Career: Known for the ubiquitous "Heart" and continuous-line characters, MUL focuses on rapid, high-impact graphic iconography that interacts playfully with urban infrastructure.
OMIM (Ireland), NOVICE (Ireland), RO (Ireland), NIALLOL (Ireland), LAIDBACK (Ireland)
- Style & Career: Core contributors to the evolving Irish street art circuit. Their styles range from raw freehand graffiti and calligraffiti to contemporary character-driven compositions.
EMBER (Ireland), KONE (Ireland), KAROL (Ireland), HMC (Ireland), ANDYMC (Ireland)
- Style & Career: Represents a mix of established writers and emerging Irish crews. Expect high-energy lettering, sharp fill-ins, and complex color schemes designed to pop against weather-worn stone and concrete.
Ailbhe Larsen (Ireland)
- Style & Career: Illustrative artist whose work leans toward fine-art storytelling, fine linework, and soft, organic motifs that contrast sharply with raw urban brickwork.
Photographic Field Strategy
- Hyper-Realism & Portraits (Zabou, Conse, Mr.Dheo, Fintan Magee): Photograph these with a mid-to-telephoto focal length (50mm–85mm) to avoid field distortion and preserve exact facial proportions.
- 3D Illusion & Perspective Works (VILE, Telmo Miel): Stand directly at the artist's intended "vanishing point" (usually offset slightly from center) to capture the intended optical depth effect.
- Wide Architectural Gables (Dan Kitchener, Fio Silva): High-resolution wide-angle lenses (15mm–24mm) are essential in Waterford's tighter medieval laneways to capture the full scope of multi-story gable end pieces without perspective clipping.
Railway Stations
* Clontarf Railway Station
* Docklands Railway Station
* Malahide Railway Station
Examples Of Waterford Walls Murals
Why Was I Using A NEX-7 In May 2016
I was a bit surprised when I realised that I used a Sony NEX-7 in May 2015 but when I checked my catalogs I discovered that the A7RII arrived late in 2015 and the 90mm F2.8 Macro lens at Christmas. I continued to use the NEX-7 for about a year as and easy to carry backup camera.
When the Sony NEX-7 debuted in late 2011, it didn't just iterate on compact mirrorless cameras—it completely redefined what serious photographers expected from a small body. Coming out of an era defined by bulky DSLRs, the NEX-7 proved that shrinking the physical footprint did not mean sacrificing control, resolution, or handling.
The Rangefinder Ergonomics & Built-In OLED EVF
Earlier compact mirrorless options (including the NEX-5) felt like upgraded point-and-shoots with touchscreen menus and optional clip-on viewfinders. The NEX-7 changed that completely by embedding a brilliant 2.36-million-dot OLED Electronic Viewfinder (EVF) directly into the top-left corner of a solid, magnesium-alloy rangefinder-style body. This gave photographers eye-level framing without forcing an awkward top attachment, making manual focusing with focus peaking seamless and intuitive.
The Legendary Tri-Navi Control System
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The defining operational triumph of the NEX-7 was its Tri-Navi interface. Featuring two twin twin-dial thumb rollers on the top plate alongside a rear control wheel, it offered three simultaneous parameter adjustments without ever taking your eye away from the EVF:
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Direct Tactile Access: Instantly adjust Aperture, Shutter Speed, and ISO (or exposure compensation) on the fly.
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No Menu Diving: Solved the primary complaint of early mirrorless platforms by putting manual shooting mechanics directly under your thumbs.
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Ultra-Fast Shutter Lag: Delivered a rapid 0.02-second shutter release lag—at the time, the world's fastest.
Class-Leading 24.3 MP APS-C Sensor
- At its launch, its 24.3-megapixel Exmor APS-C sensor delivered resolution and dynamic range that directly rivaled—and often surpassed—mid-to-high-end full-frame and APS-C DSLRs of the time. It captured rich fine detail, provided immense cropping flexibility, and proved that a tiny body could handle demanding archive work.
The E-Mount Bridge & VG10E Ecosystem
- The NEX-7 served as the key bridge to professional mirrorless adoption. Paired alongside video-focused hardware like the NEX-VG10E—which introduced the large APS-C sensor and interchangeable E-mount optics into a dedicated video camcorder form factor—Sony established a unified lens ecosystem.
By combining DSLR-grade image quality, rangefinder handling, manual tactile control, and high adaptability for adapted glass, the NEX-7 laid the foundational architecture that eventually evolved into the high-resolution A7R series and flagship A1 bodies.
