These stencils on the back of the dole office, visible from Great Patrick St, are lamenting the lack of jobs. “Why do they keep sending me to look for jobs that aren’t there?” “5,000 jobs to be created each year. 125,000 people out of work.”
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Copyright © 2013 Seosamh Mac Coılle
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This is a 2012 mural by Cork artist Conor Harrington (whose blog is called ConorSaysBoom) in Hill Street (below the Duke Of York). Two men fence while a third watches on; nature in the form of a deer lies dead on the floor.
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Writer’s Square in central Belfast is still being ‘Occupy’ed. This image was taken during the week of the G8 summit. The quote attributed to Albert Einstein reads, “The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything.”
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Copyright © 2013 Seosamh Mac Coılle
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The two murals featured here, depicting Smithfield in the ‘good old days’ — before it was fire-bombed in 1974 (gallery of 10 images at the Tele) – are inside the modern Smithfield, rebuilt in 1986, depicted in the third and fourth images. Update 2013-11: The two ‘Memories of Smithfield’ paintings are by Angela Ginn and Lorraine Burrell, 1999; funded by Belfast City Council.
The external shot is taken from the rear of Castlecourt. The foreign multinationals in it appear to be flourishing, while many units are vacant inside Smithfield.
For background: A 40-page booklet on the history of Smithfield | BBC footage from 1959. Click here for a video about bookseller John Clancy.
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The Angry Birds puzzle game (on mobile devices and on Facebook) is a smash hit for Finnish game developers Rovio (WP) and is now a part of popular culture, including this take-off on the Comber Walkway – angry burners.
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Copyright © 2013 Seosamh Mac Coılle
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Here is a close-up of the fourth panel of the five-panel piece in the Dark Horse recorded separately. The four other panels represent the production of rope, ships, whiskey, and tobacco products. The “William Bloat” panel presumably stands for the linen industry, as the star of the tale is the bed sheet that is fashioned into a noose. The words to the song, including an extra verse not shown on the board, can be found below, along with a Tommy Makem performance of the song (from 1973!) in which the blade is Japanese-made.
William Bloat – Raymond Calvert (1926)
In a mean abode on the Shankill Road
Lived a man named William Bloat;
He had a wife, the bane of his life,
Who always got his goat.
And one day at dawn, with her nightdress on
He slit her bloody throat.
[With a razor gash he settled her hash
Never was crime so slick
But the drip drip drip on the pillowslip
Of her lifeblood made him sick.
And the knee-deep gore on the bedroom floor
Grew clotted and cold and thick.]
Now, he was glad he had done what he had
As she lay there stiff and still
‘Til suddenly awe of the angry law
Filled his soul with an icy chill.
And to finish the fun so well begun
He decided himself to kill.
Then he took the sheet from his wife’s cold feet
And he twisted it into a rope
And he hanged himself from the pantry shelf,
‘Twas an easy end, let’s hope.
With his dying breath and he facing death
He solemnly cursed the Pope.
But the strangest turn to the whole concern
Is only just beginning.
He went to Hell but his wife got well
And she’s still alive and sinning,
For the razor blade was German made
But the rope was Belfast linen.
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Copyright © 2013 Seosamh Mac Coılle
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Whiskey, the middle of five panels (see below) in another piece from the courtyard of the Dark Horse pub in the city centre portraying four Northern Irish industries of/in the past – rope, ships, whiskey – the words to the song William Bloat – and tobacco products.
The piece is by local artist Ciaran Gallagher, who has put a URL to his website in the bottom right. It is between the McBride’s board and the Fritz Lang/Big Brother piece.
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Copyright © 2013 Seosamh Mac Coılle
X01027 X01023 corbetts whites dunvilles old irish, carry only specially marked cigarettes feel in your pockets! be sure no tobacco or unmarked cigarettes are in your possession remember you are liable to be searched gallahers nutcracker tobacco navy cut murrays mixture columbine park drive rich dark honeydew condor de luxe green two flakes blue paragon turkish blend gold plate silver the largest manufacturers in the world of irish roll and cut factory belfast
This piece in North Street, in the city centre, combines realistic buildings with honeycomb patterning run together with cloud-like spray-paint, threatening to envelope the impressionistic figure in the foreground. The surface is the shutter of a shop front. By emic/This Means Nothing for CNB 2012. (The hand in the bottom left can also be found around the corner in Garfield Street.)
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Following on from the crannóg excavations, we might say that we walk around on top of the past, layer upon layer. Here, however, the living people walk around below those that are frozen in time.
North Street, Belfast/Béal Feırste.
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Copyright © 2013 Seosamh Mac Coılle
X00969 though newly christened smithfield and union has existed for generations its identity and its existence has never been in question giving it a name gives it a heart celebrates the individual the different the separate the idiosyncratic and the eclectic old belfast new vision
Time becomes distorted under the influence of Guinness and Salvador Dali and his Persistence of Memory at the Duke of York, or more precisely, in the archway that leads from Donegall Street to the pub. Dali’s original is only 9.5 x 13 inches. This is the centre part of a larger mural; there are also three images of Dali in the windows above the archway (see T00766). The Spaniard bar in Skipper Street (one block south of the Duke Of York) also featured Dali on its sign.
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Seosamh Mac Coille Collection 