Writing on the wall: Art UK digitises thousands of murals as street artworks go mainstream

From medieval church wall paintings to Liam Gallagher’s viral X post, charity has catalogued more than 6,600 pieces Some of the UK’s smallest public murals are on bollards in Shrewsbury while one of the biggest is on a 1960s 16-storey block of flats in Gosport. Perhaps the funniest though is in Cardiff. Ahead of last summer’s Oasis concerts it was a straightforward copy of Liam Gallagher’s viral post on X declaring: “Because Cardiff is the bollox.” The murals are among more than 6,600 that have been identified, photographed and digitised in an ambitious project which launched in January 2024, the charity Art UK said. It is part of their mission to catalogue as much of the nation’s public art as possible, whether oil paintings, watercolours or statues. There are mural examples from Penzance to Orkney, Lowestoft to County Fermanagh and it includes columns that look like Rolo packets under the M4 in south Wales, a grazing giraffe on the side of a tenement building in Glasgow and Alan Bennett riding a bike on the side of BBC Radio Leeds. Katey Goodwin, the deputy chief executive of Art UK, said the number far exceeded the target of finding 5,000, reflecting the explosion of murals in t