painted board

Mothers Of The Revolution

Extramural ActivityLeave a comment

Here are two murals from the Youth First (Tw) group in and around their Bogside home in Meenan Square. In the image above, a young mother sporting both a nappy pin and an Easter lily tends to her infant child while casting a look back at Free Derry corner and the silhouettes of marchers and washing on a line. The image below also shows Free Derry corner and the skyline of the city.

02830 2015-08-24 YouthFirst+

Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2015 Seosamh Mac Coılle
X02799 X02830 you are now entering celtic cross caolan tonisha P.m. amy-leigh BAP chloe liam E.s. cian conor chantelle KT tricolour

My Old Toy Box

Extramural ActivityLeave a comment
02765 2015-08-16 SmithfieldToyBox+

Smithfield Market houses a wide variety of shops (BelfastCity) including Filipino groceries, dressmaking, hairdressing, jewelry, a nail bar, computers, carpets, bicycles, e-cigarettes and also – shown above – My Old Toy Box (Fb), sellers of model toys. Cash only!

Previously: Smithfield Market

02764 2015-08-16 SmithfieldInterior+

Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2015 Seosamh Mac Coılle
X02765 X02764 their only colour was khaki winetavern street

An Raıbh Tú Ag An gCarraıg?

Extramural ActivityLeave a comment
2015-04-14 FailteGoGleannBanDetail+

“Were you at the rock?” A red-headed lass (from an illustration in the Weekly Freeman of December 19th, 1891, commemorating 1798) with a horn stands watch for others at a mass rock – a stone in a remote location for Catholic worship, made necessary by a Penal law of 1695 which forbade the religious practice of Catholicism and “dissenter” forms of Protestantism (that is, anything other than Anglicism) (source). The harp, with a “cap of liberty” rather than a crown (WP), together the slogan “Equality – It is new strung and it shall be heard” is the emblem of the Society of United Irishmen (WP). On the other side of the mural (seen below) linen lies in the fields bleaching and a farmer and wife plough the land with a team of horses and distribute seed.

2015-04-14 FailteGoGleannBan+

Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2015 Seosamh Mac Coılle
X02583 X02582 irish harp priest buckle shows welcome to glenbawn fáılte go gleann bán painted by Eithne Kane

The Strand Bar

Extramural ActivityLeave a comment
2015-03-27 StrandBar+

After adding windows to the downstairs, The Strand Bar has reinstated the mural previously at the front in the form of a painted board (above) showing the original bar in Anderson Street (the current Arran Street), which was attacked by the UVF in 1975 with the loss of six lives. The relative size can be gauged from the wide shot, below. The previous mural can be seen in the bottom two images. For photographs of the original bar, see the BelfastForum.

2015-03-27 StrandBarWide+

2011-00-00 StrandBarDetail+

2011-00-00 StrandBarWide+

Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2011 Seosamh Mac Coılle
X02565 X02566 X00382 X00383 installed 2015-03-20 melting pot

Big Jim

Extramural ActivityLeave a comment
2015-02-28 TransportLarkin+

Big Jim Larkin spoke from the steps of the Custom House – a stone’s throw away from this new mural at Transport House in the city centre – in the early months of 1907, speaking on behalf of the dockers and other unskilled labourers, recruiting them to the National Union of Dock Workers, and ultimately organizing various strikes as part of what is now known as the ‘Belfast Lockout’, which stretched from April 26th to August 28th. Larkin was expelled from the NUDL and went on to form the Irish Transport & General Workers Union in 1909 and organize the Dublin Lockout in 1913. The rest of his history is equally dramatic, including arrest and imprisonment for ‘criminal anarchism’ in the US in 1919. (WP)

Here is an image of Larkin on the platform at a Belfast rally (mouse-over to enlarge), surrounded by workers wearing cloth caps.

2015-02-28 TransportClothCaps+

Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2015 Seosamh Mac Coılle
X02541 X02539 international workers world wobblies

Unite The Union

Extramural ActivityLeave a comment
2015-02-28 TransportUnite+

Here are more images from the new ‘Unite – the union’ mural at Transport House. A separate entry features Jim Larkin, who, after the Belfast lockout, founded the Irish Transport & General Workers Union in 1909. The separate (Amalgamated) Transport & General Workers Union (headquartered in London) was formed in 1922. (Larkin’s old union NUDL, renamed the National Union of Dock, Riverside and General Workers in Great Britain and Ireland, joined soon after in the same year.) In 2007, the T&G merged with Amicus to form the current Unite – The Union. The TGWU’s base in Belfast was Transport House, a 1959 building by architect J.J. Brennan in the International style (C20) and a B1 listed building (wikimedia). As can be seen from the image of a female welder above, the new mural features the green tile squares of the building itself, as well as the string of workers in the large mosaic on the front.

2015-02-28 TransportFront+

2015-02-28 TransportWide+

Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2015 Seosamh Mac Coılle
X02542 X02540 X02543

Fifty Shades Of Belfast

Extramural ActivityLeave a comment
2015-02-07 UpstairsMidCrop+

Jamie Dornan (from Holywood) and Gillian Anderson are stars of the BBC series The Fall. He plays a serial-killer terrorizing Belfast and she the detective leading the investigation. Anderson is not shown here as she appears in The Fall, but in the style of Fifty Shades OfGrey, the BDSM-explicit novel by E. L. James, which has now been made into a movie, starring Dornan. It goes on general release tomorrow, Valentine’s Day, February 14th.

The panel above is one of a dozen from the new “upstairs” part of the Belfast Windows piece by Ciaran Gallagher (web) in the courtyard of the Dark Horse/Duke Of York. As Ciaran himself warns on his Facebook page, the “upstairs” material is adult and “not for the faint-hearted”. Below you can see the middle quartet: in the attic, a semi-nude woman behind bars with a menacing face in the background; on the left, Romper Room is on the TV and the skinhead sports a Mr. Do-Bee tattoo, but this is a UDA romper room, not kids’ playtime: two hoods take baseball bats to a victim; and in the middle, a pot-smoking policeman (in RUC/early-PSNI uniform) stands under the grow-lights of a cannabis factory.

For the “downstairs” part of the work, see Belfast, You’re Melting My Head | Belfast Stripped Bare.

2015-02-07 UpstairsMid+

Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2015 Seosamh Mac Coılle
X02508 X02507 bob marley and the wailers exodus george formby

Teenage Dreams

Extramural ActivityLeave a comment
2015-02-07 UpstairsRight+

Here are the three right-most panels from Ciaran Gallagher’s (web) “Upstairs” in the Dark Horse/Duke Of York courtyard:

On the left, a young (and left-handed) Gary Lightbody of Snow Patrol images himself as a future rock star as he plays the broom, beneath an Undertones sign, “Teenage dreams, so hard to beat”, reflected in the mirror. (Drummer Jonny Quinn worked at Good Vibrations as a youth.)

In the middle, a mature Rory McIlroy relives a moment from age nine, when he appeared on the Gerry Kelly show on UTv and chipped balls into a washing machine.

And finally, Carl “The Jackal” Frampton lets out a roar after beating Spaniard Kiko Martinez to become IBF world super-bantamweight champion in September 2014. He defends his title this Saturday (2015-02-28).

In the attic: Deep Throat, not the Watergate scandal but the porno, both 1972.

See previously: Fifty Shades Of Belfast, featuring The Fall (from television) and Romper Room (not from television).

Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2015 Seosamh Mac Coılle
X02509 bangor is bollock freezing live at the duke 19 dec 1998 hollywood linda lovelace deep throat teenage kicks

The Bar Is Called Heaven

Extramural ActivityLeave a comment
2015-02-07 UpstairsWide+

Here is the full width of the “upstairs” of Ciaran Gallgher’s Belfast Exposed, and with it the full expanse of the Klondyke Bar mural above it (featured previously in Nixon Resigns, Best Quits). For close shots of the ‘upstairs’, see Fifty Shades Of Belfast | Teenage Dreams.

To get some sense of the scale of these works, you should (get yourself a large monitor and) …

Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2015 Seosamh Mac Coılle
X02510 guinness bass harp double diamond bill kirk jamie dornan gillian anderson the fall rory mcilroy gerry kelly carl frampton the jackal mirror attic pot weed marijuana bong police deep throat linda lovelace romper room UDA bob marley simply the best IRA arm-wrestle elephant