Artist News

Call for new permanent location for Manchester’s Ian Curtis mural

By | Published on Thursday 1 September 2022

Joy Division

An appeal has been launched to find a new permanent site in Manchester’s Northern Quarter for a mural of Joy Division’s Ian Curtis, which was painted over with an advert for Aitch’s debut album last month.

Manchester councillor Pat Karney says that a new location for the artwork needs to be found because the owner of the building where it previously appeared now wants to use the walls for advertising. Which would explain the whole it being painted over by an Aitch ad thing.

“It would be silly to put the mural back up there because it could be taken down again quite quickly and we’d go through the same routine”, Karney told BBC Radio Manchester yesterday. “We don’t want to go through that rigmarole again, we want a permanent site”.

And so, he said, “I’m putting out an appeal for a building owner in the Northern Quarter”.

There was anger when the Curtis mural – originally painted by artist Akse P19 in 2020 to promote mental health awareness – was covered over with the Aitch advert, which had been commissioned by Amazon Music.

The rapper told the many angry people on Twitter that he had been unaware of the advert until he also learned about it on social media, adding that he would get it “fixed pronto”. Amazon Music also said that it had not known that the advert would cover the earlier mural and apologised to everyone who was “justifiably upset”.

Karney added that Aitch and his management team have “been brilliant” and are “very, very keen to help us out”.

But before anything can happen, they need a wall. Maybe you have one. If so, get in touch with Pat.



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