The Roof is the rooftop bar of the Union Street Bar. “The Roof” is by Visual Waste (ig) on the Little Donegall Street side of the bar. The photo was taken from the junction of Stephen and Library streets.
The Ru Paul mural in the space below — seen in Sashay Away — has been blacked out.
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A couple of Leo Boyd (ig) paste-ups of his PSNIce-Cream land-rover (previously a mural in Kent St) are peeling off the pole in North Street, perhaps in part because of the recent warm temperatures.
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Work by emic (ig) in Castle Lane, Belfast, perhaps picking up a theme from Friz’s Under The Cherry Blossoms in Castle Arcade which focused on the castle and grounds in the era of Arthur Chichester. Chichester’s castle burned down in 1708 and by 1800 the castle and its grounds were vanishing under buildings akin to the nearby corn market and Belfast entries (WP).
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Here is a Leo Boyd (ig) print of an x-wing police land rover – one in a series of land rovers: see previously: ice-cream-van land rover | wind-up land rover | surveillance land rover.
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This is a gallery of the new Hit The North pieces on Union Street south of Kent Street. There is a separate post for the new pieces on Union Street north of Kent Street.
From north to south (top to bottom in this post) the works are by:
Conor McClure (ig)
All The Doodz (ig)
Wee Nuls (ig)
Glen Molloy x2 (ig)
Hixxy (ig)
Ed Hicks (ig) – on the Sunflower side of the street
Danny Rumbl (ig)
NOL (ig)
Andrey Palval (ig)
[Nol faces] see the Paddy Duffy collection
[Owl] see the Paddy Duffy collection
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Here is a gallery of the new pieces from Hit The North 2023 on the north side of Kent Street (there is a separate post for the south side and there is a separate post at Paddy Duffy’s site for Kent Street above Union Street).
From left to right (top to bottom in this post), the artists are:
Zippy (ig)
Alana McDowell (ig)
Asbestos (ig)
Angry Dan (ig)
?TMN krew?
Sufek West
Hallion – “Цe нaшe поле до біса” [this is our hell on earth] – a common description of the battle for Bakhmut by Ukranian soldiers (AP | France24 | CNN); this was the last of several slogans painted by Hallion throughout the festival (tw)
RASK (ig) + STER (ig) + SUMS (ig)
[writing]
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Davd J McMillan (ig) returned to Belfast from Bristol for HTN2023, which this year used the interior walls of the wasteground opposite the Sunflower. The writing appears to read “Ce nas pas une pint” but based on the pipe in the other hand, presumably should be “Ceci n’est pas une pint” in homage to Magritte’s famous non-pipe “Treachery Of Images” (or perhaps, based on the sketch, “Je n’ai pas une pint”).
Also included are various pieces of graffiti art, including a tiger-cat by PENS (ig) and a red-nosed boy by KVLR (ig).
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Annatomix (web) painted a giant fox for HTN23 over DanLeo’s 2016 Palm Cockatoo and (as the wide shot below shows) next to BUST’s Dry Gin.
Union Street, Belfast.
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Three stickers of resistance in Belfast’s city centre: above, communistparty.ie confirms Marx’s prediction of capitalism’s inevitable failure; below, under-paid, over-worked, and mis-treated hospitality workers are encouraged to “give the goss on your boss”; next below, an old sticker calling for Northern Ireland to follow the Republic in adopting abortion leglislation (parliament.uk) – “not the church, not the state, we must choose our fate – #thenorthisnow [Image.ie]” (as well as a commercial sticker by the singer A.N.J.A.); finally below, from Sailortown, stickers from the IWW or wobblies (“one big union.ie“) and the United Tech & Allied Workers (“the past we inherit, the future we build”).
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Enniskillen singer John Garrity (ig | Fb) is a familiar face in Belfast city centre, often seen busking in Castle Place and Cornmarket. He drew criticism in September 2021 for singing the ballad ‘Grace’ – about the hours-long bride of James Plunkett, executed after the 1916 Rising – while an Orange Order parade passed by. Garrity claims he was already singing the song when the parade happened to come by (Belfast Live). (Here is a rendition from another occasion – youtube.) He then gained a persistent heckler (Irish News). Now he is the subject of a mural by Glen Molloy (ig) in Donegall Street, Belfast, on the wall of the long-ago burned-out North Street Arcade, where Matt Sewell’s Carnival Of The Animals was.
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Seosamh Mac Coille Collection 