A Welcoming Hand

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2015-02-19 SliabhDubhWelcome+

Local residents and children who helped construct the ‘Welcome To Sliabh Dubh’ mosaic at the top of the estate got to include their handprints as part of the artwork, under the direction of Martin McClure (according to a City Council brochure). As the other images (below) show, the area is also host to another mosaic depicting local landmarks from the past such as the Glenalina Bleaching Co and a cottage on the hills of Black Mountain as well as the superhero murals (Wallbusters | Cartoon World | Red-Eye) and Disney murals (some of which have been featured in If The Shoe Fits | Look Behind You! | Magic Mountain).

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Welcome To The Shankill

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2015-02-18 WelcomeShankillFull+

The ‘Welcome To The Shankill’ board is looking the worse for wear, as can be seen particularly in the three close-ups below of the Boyardo memorial at Aberdeen Street, the (previously featured) Malvern Arch mural in Hopewell, and the Crumlin Road Gaol. For the two strips of ‘famous faces’ on either side, see Welcome To The Shankill Road.

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X02523 X02522 X02525 X02524 Gardiner Street Norman Whiteside, Baroness May Blood, Jimmy Warnock, William Conor, Col. James Cunningham, Johnny McQuade, Wayne McCullough, Rev. Henry Montgomery, lower shankill, peter’s hill, agnes, canmore, woodvale, cupar, berlin, crimea, tennent, cambrai, northumberland, boundary, doggie barbers grooming service, alternatives

Space Exploration

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2015-02-14 DevlinNose+

Above is another Patrick Devlin stencil at the Red Barn Gallery. Extensive research has failed to reveal who/what the stencil is based on – some sort of nose-picking gorilla-monster in a cowl. Leave a comment or send an e-mail if you have an idea.

Previously by Devlin: Blowing My Mind | Attendez, Je Suis Charlie | Mr. Lee | The Passion

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Attendez: Je Suis Charlie

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2015-02-14 DevlinChaplin+

Charlie Hedbo, the satirical Parisian weekly which became internationally known after a gun attack in January in which 12 were killed, is named after Charlie Brown (from Charles Schultz’s Peanuts) but the Charlie Chaplin above (as seen in The Kid) uses French to try to claim the name for himself. Chaplin and his family settled in French-speaking Switzerland after he was denied entry to the US as part of Joseph McCarthy’s witch-hunt of artists with alleged communist sympathies (WP). Stencil by Patrick Devlin in the city centre.

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Glenfield Community Association

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2015-02-11 JoinTheUDAFull+

The 2010 work of Jade, Andi, Katie, Leigh, Ellen, Lyndsay, Shannon, and Hannah on the substation at the top of the Glenfield estate’s Oakfield Road has been replaced this week by a new UDA mural sporting a hooded gunman facing the viewer with a slogan borrowed from Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata: “Better to die on your feet than live on your knees in an Irish republic. Join the UDA.”. The two wide shots below allow you to compare the scene this week with last week.

The mural has been criticized by both DUP and Alliance councillors (Newsletter). The final words – Join the UDA – have drawn particular ire, as in other respects it is similar to other murals in featuring hooded gunmen, such as these two other Carrickfergus murals: Inclusion | Eternal Vigilance.

Nolan Show discussion of the mural on 2015-02-11: Part 1 | Part 2

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Fifty Shades Of Belfast

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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.

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Teenage Dreams

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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).

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