2013: LOVE/HATE CAST PROVING A 'HIT' ATTRACTION FOR CITY SHOPPERS". The Herald. 22nd October, 2013.
Watch your back, Nidge, Fran, Tommy and Darren have been spotted hanging around in the Westbury Mall. In fact the brooding life-size characters have become a major attraction in the city centre mall.
When artist Niall O'Loughlin decided the only way to capture the TV hoodlums was in six foot studies, he could only find one art gallery in Dublin willing to put them on display. However Nidge & Co have now found their way into the street outside the Balla Bán Art Gallery to the delight of passers-by.
"The Love/Hate cast stop people dead every day. Immediately camera phones are coming out and people want their pictures taken with them," Gallery owner Frank O'Dea told the Herald. The former bank worker also claims the cardboard hoodlums appear to have cut down on anti-social behaviour in the area. "They're better than having a security guard on the door," O'Dea joked.
But the Love/Hate gang could soon be gone with punters snapping up the gangsters at eur90 each. "We've sold nearly a dozen so far. They must be the weirdest thing to get as a present. I'm not sure I'd want to wake up with these guys in my house on Chistmas morning," he added.
And Love/Hate creator Stuart Carolan has also been immortalised in another work on sale at the Balla Bán Art Gallery. The work by artist Ray Sherlock depicts the Navan Man's work, including a resurrected cat jumping off the page.
Speaking about his decision to create the work, artist Niall O'Loughlin said: As an artist you only think about what you want to create, not will it sell. I wanted to catch the cast of Love/Hate together lie this before more of them get killed off," said O'Loughlin whose fans and collectors include Denis Desmond and Sharon Corr.