Both under her own name and as a member of the all-female Minaw Collective, Emmalene Blake (or ESTR, as she's also known) has been brightening up walls around Dublin city for the last few years, spreading messages of positivity in the process.

We caught up with the 28-year-old Dubliner to discuss how she first got into art, why street art is so satisfying, mixing pop culture with political messages, working with Minaw and why imparting her knowledge to youngsters is so important to her.

How did you first get into street art – and whose lead were you taking when it came to start making your own?

I was always curious and intrigued by graffiti I saw painted around Dublin when I was a teenager, and began to take notice of what was appearing on the walls and who was painting it. Maser was everywhere. You couldn’t grow up in Dublin with an interest in graffiti without knowing his work. In 2008, I saw him give a talk in The Sugar Club which was pretty cool, and around the same time - or maybe a year beforehand - my uncle had bought me a book on Banksy’s work and this introduced me to this type of stencil street art. I was also starting college the same year, studying Fine Art in DIT, and everything at the time was furthering my obsession with street art. I started messing about making my own stencils around this time, some just for fun, some as social commentary to what was going on in Ireland at the time. From then on, whenever my birthday or Christmas came around everyone would buy me books on street art. I started discovering other amazingly talented artists like C215, or closer to home, Will St. Leger. It isn’t just street artists who inspire me, however. Talented creatives like London’s Kate Moross leave me in awe. If I could swap lives with anyone it would be her. She seems to just blow it out of the water with everything she tries her hand at.

You've been sharing your knowledge as an artist with other people for several years now, via YouthReach and the Emmalene Art School. Why is that so important to you?


Although art was always my passion, teaching was as well. The plan from the start was to go to art college, then go into teaching while also making my own art. When I was in school I had a teacher who looked out for me a good bit. I was in trouble all of the time (I’m pretty sure they had my mam on speed dial), but she got me out of a lot of this trouble and is probably the only reason I made it out the other end. Since then, I’ve always thought teaching was a pretty cool profession. As well as being able to pass on your knowledge of what you’re passionate about, you’re also working with and maybe influencing people who are at a pretty crazy stage of their lives and starting to find themselves and their place in the world.

You work with different materials, but what is it about spray paint and street art that feels different from other methods and materials?


I love spray paint because it’s so fast - which I suppose is a bit of a contradiction, because I work with stencils a lot which take aaaaaages to make, but the painting part is fast - and the scale. What I love about street art is that it's out in the open for everyone to see. You’re not just reaching people who go to galleries to see art. And people don’t need to take time out of their day to see it; they can simply enjoy it while walking to work, or hanging out in the (very rare) sun. Also, again the scale. I’d never be able to find a canvas as big as some of the walls I’ve painted.

A lot of, if not most of your work, involves people – whether it's Nelson Mandela, Bowie, portraits of friends or your work during the Marriage Referendum campaign last year. Is it fair to say that you're driven by capturing the human side of life, more than anything else?

Yeah, definitely. I love capturing real people through spray paint. When planning for an exhibition or graffiti jam, my brain automatically goes to “Who will I paint?” as opposed to “What will I paint?” - even when there’s a theme that would sway people towards something else, like a tattoo art exhibition I had paintings in. Instead of thinking of what tattoo designs or tattoo art style paintings I could paint, I straight away decided I would paint Maud Wagner and Artoria Gibbons. These were two of the first ever 'Tattooed Ladies', who used to travel around in circuses and sideshows in the early 1900s. I was writing my thesis for my degree on western women in tattoo culture at the time, and these women fascinated me. These paintings are hanging in The Ink Factory now.

 

There's a lot of humour in your work, too.

Obviously not with all of my work, but with some of it I like to take the piss and have a laugh. Especially with Irish humour. I absolutely love Irish humour. It’s probably my favourite thing about being Irish. The banter we all have with each other and being able to take the absolute piss out of each other and laugh at ourselves. I love that.

Is there anyone that you'd love to work or collaborate with, famous or otherwise?

I would love to collaborate with Kate Moross. I think I’ve already said how amazing I think all of her work is. I don’t think there’s anything she can’t do. If you don’t already know her work, you need to check it out. But if we’re specifically talking street artists then I’d have to go with the other artists I’ve already mentioned – C215, Maser, Will St. Leger. Fin Dac is also amazing and would be pretty sweet to collaborate with. I’m really looking forward to collaborating with all the Minaw girls. I was delighted to be asked to join the collective earlier in the year. We had a graffiti jam in March in The Bernard Shaw which myself and five of the other girls painted at which was great, so I can’t wait to do more with them and paint with the rest of the girls in the collective too.

Several members of the Minaw Collective with their work on Crampton Court, Dublin

Minaw Collective (M.C.) is an all female Irish based street art collective. Its (currently eleven) members are scattered across Ireland, from Dublin to Belfast and the west. The collective is made up of Friz (Sligo/Belfast), Lolz (Dublin), Kin MX (Mexico/Dublin), Loki Nom Nom (Dublin/Leitrim), Novice (Dublin), Emily (Dublin), Bubu (Dublin/Brazil), Myfanwy Nia (Swansea/London/Leitrim), ESTR (Dublin), Signs of Power (Dublin) and Anna (Dublin).


For more on Emmalene's work, see here; for more on the Minaw Collective, see here.

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