Waterford Walls And The Layered Canvas At 15 Thomas Street

The Urban Cartographer

A photographic and historical overview of the 15 Thomas Street mural site at Waterford Walls, featuring Jagung's 2022 portrait, previous works by Taquen and Vunik, and intact 2018 murals by MonkeyBird and Garreth Joyce.

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Waterford Walls And The Layered Canvas At 15 Thomas Street

Author: William Murphy - The Urban Cartographer

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02. Oct 2026

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Waterford Walls: The Layered Canvas of 15 Thomas Street

The open car park and pocket-park space facing the gable of 15 Thomas Street (at the junction of Thomas Street and Meeting House Lane) serves as one of the most prominent multi-mural sites within Waterford City. The tall gable wall itself has functioned as a rotating canvas across different editions of the Waterford Walls International Street Art Festival, while its flanking boundary walls preserve monumental works from 2018.

The Current Gable Mural: Jagung (2022)

The current monumental portrait on the gable of 15 Thomas Street was painted in August 2022 during the 8th edition of Waterford Walls by the Malaysian street artist and muralist Jagung (Kong Chak Kiong). The work is signed at the lower section as Jagung 2022 and is catalogued under the title About This Girl (also referred to as The Girl).

  • The Artist: Jagung (born 1991) is a self-taught, international traveling muralist based in Malaysia whose medium is spray paint, known for high-definition 3D realistic objects, drapery, and portraiture.
  • Visual Composition: The mural depicts the profile of a young Asian woman wearing wire-rimmed spectacles, rendered in photorealistic flesh tones against a dark background. The lower portion of the figure is draped in sweeping, sculptural folds of lavender-purple cloth. Anchoring the composition at street level—surrounding the ground-floor wall openings—are oversized, highly reflective chrome spray-paint cans, representing the artist's primary tool and paying direct homage to graffiti and mural craftsmanship.

History of the 15 Thomas Street Gable

The gable wall of No. 15 has been repainted three times over the course of the festival's history:

  1. Vunik (2015–2018): Painted during the inaugural years of the festival, Austrian illustrator and street artist Vunik decorated the wall with an energetic, quirky composition of fighting cockerels executed in an expressive, illustrative style.
  2. Taquen – Laura (August 2019): For the fifth edition of Waterford Walls, Spanish muralist Taquen (Carlos Alberto Gómez Salgado, Madrid) was commissioned to paint over Vunik’s piece. Finished on 25 August 2019, the mural—titled Laura—introduced a muted, minimalist aesthetic focused on subtle earth tones and delicate contour lines portraying a woman in contemplative repose.
  3. Jagung – About This Girl (August 2022 – Present): Three years later, the festival invited Jagung to repaint the facade for the 2022 edition, introducing the current high-contrast figurative portrait with trompe-l’œil drapery and spray cans.

The Two Enduring Car Park Murals (2018)

Directly adjacent to the 15 Thomas Street gable within the car park perimeter are two murals that have remained intact since the 4th edition of Waterford Walls in August 2018:

  • MonkeyBird – The Castle on the Cliff (Left-Hand Gable): Visible in the background facing across the car park is a monumental monochrome piece by the French stencil duo MonkeyBird (Louis Boidron and Edouard Egea). Executed in their trademark style resembling classical woodcut engravings and Renaissance architectural prints, the composition incorporates Gothic spires, arched vaulted architecture, and their signature symbolic figures: the monkey (representing terrestrial craft, realism, and manual labour) and the bird (symbolising intellect, dreams, and ethereal aspirations).

  • Garreth Joyce (Right-Hand Flank Wall): Spanning the lateral street-facing boundary wall on the right is an expansive piece by Dublin-based graphic designer and muralist Garreth Joyce, painted during the August 2018 festival. It features stylised figurative elements and bold geometric forms, providing a structured graphic counterpoint to the fine-art realism and delicate stencil work across the rest of the site.

Stylistic Shift: From Comic Character Design to Fine-Art Portraiture

The visual progression on this single site mirrors the wider evolution of European street art festivals over the last decade:

  • 2015–2017 (Illustrative & Character Focus): Early festival curation embraced character-based, illustrative street art and graffiti-adjacent visual languages—evident in Vunik's cartoon fighting birds, comic linework, and stylised animal motifs.
  • 2018 Onwards (Fine-Art Realism & Monumental Portraiture): As the festival secured municipal backing and broader civic visibility, curators shifted towards monumental contemporary fine art. Smooth, photorealistic portraiture—such as Taquen’s minimalist figurative work and Jagung's photorealistic portrait—serves as accessible public art, replacing raw underground illustration with classical draughtsmanship and high-impact civic landmarks.

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