CIRA stencil outside the offices of the West Belfast Partnership on the Falls Road, with the offices of Sınn Féın Poblachtach and a tricolour reflected in the window.
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Copyright © 2015 Seosamh Mac Coılle
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“Sam Thompson 1916-1965 Playwright ‘Over The Bridge’ 1960. Born in 2 Montrose Street beside this house.” In addition to his written works, Thompson was a painter for H&W and the Corporation, a trade unionist and Labour candidate (WP).
Montrose Street South, east Belfast
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Copyright © 2014 Seosamh Mac Coılle
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Here’s a wide shot of the right-hand side of the murals in the lower Shankill estate. These gables have remained in place while the estate has been redeveloped, causing the removal of the Red Hand, Martin Luther and Cuchulainn murals.
For closer views, see Freedom 2000 | Gold Rush | McCullough | Child’s Play
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Copyright © 2015 Seosamh Mac Coılle
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A menacing sofa, or possibly the Titanic centre, lurches through the flames on the shutters of the re:store furniture shop, with LOFT upstairs.
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Copyright © 2014 Seosamh Mac Coılle
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Spanish artist Marta Revillas (web | Fb) painted the remaining shutter on the Bigg Life Arts centre. Her piece depicts a bikini’ed woman with fox ears and tail astride a motorcycle with an extended fork. Launched 2014-09-26. For the other shutters, see Lost In The Music and Art Lab.
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Copyright © 2014 Seosamh Mac Coılle
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Vacant houses are targets for thieves stealing copper tanks, pipes, and wiring, which they sell to unscrupulous scrap-metal dealers. In one case, the theft caused a gas leak which resulted in houses being evacuated (BelTel). The Housing Executive now removes the copper from empty residences and replaces it when the resident moves in, at a cost of about £3,000 (BBC-NI).
“Warning: Copper tanks and pipes have been removed from this property. Keep out. This property is being monitored for unlawful activity.”
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Copyright © 2014 Seosamh Mac Coılle
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Here’s Kilian Redmonk’s CNB14 piece in North Street. A cyan (and earless!) version of his CNB13 work shown in Redmonk Bluelips.
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Copyright © 2014 Seosamh Mac Coılle
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“She Sat Down So We Could Stand Up”. Rosa Parks was born 101 years ago today, on February 4th, 1913. This board in the New Lodge hails her as as the “mother of the civil rights movement”. It includes images of Parks in old age, a reproduction of a photo of Parks sitting on a bus in Montgomery in 1956, after the Supreme Court ruling which declared segregation on the buses illegal, eleven months after the boycott began, and a Montgomery civil rights march on December 5th, 1955 led by Martin Luther King and Coretta Scott King. The title of this entry is a Parks quote. Someone suggested to her, in an attempt to minimize her actions, that perhaps she had refused to move simply because she was tired, to which she replied, “The only tired I was, was tired of giving in”.
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Copyright © 2013 Seosamh Mac Coılle
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The three-storey mural above is in Ballysillan and replaced a UVF mural when it was added in 2011. The mural is the work of Jim Russell, shown below at Arts For All where he is artist-in-residence. The information below was provided by Arts For All.
The Great War: The first panel commemorates the Great War that ravaged Europe from 1914 to 1918 and shows troops advancing into battle, the Ulster Tower at Thiepval commemorating the sacrifice at the Somme and an image showing one of the war cemeteries and highlighting the true cost of war.
Second World War: The second panel features some of the devastation visited upon Belfast during a series of Luftwaffe raids during the early years of the Second World War. Belfast suffered greatly with over 1,000 people dying in four nights of bombing in April and May of 1941.
The Troubles: In the third panel highlight the dark history known as the Troubles. It features two events from the years of that time – the murder of the three young off-duty Scottish soldiers in 1971 [the monument depicted was featured in The Highland] and the Bloody Friday bombings of July 1972. In the midst of the horror that accompanied the early years of the Troubles these events still caused many to struggle to understand how people could carry out such atrocities.
Present Day Conflict: Panel four brings us up to the present day. Military service is a tradition for many in Northern Ireland and for many their first overseas trip came on the back of an overseas posting whilst serving in one of the Armed Forces. From times past, through the World Wars, the Korean War, to more recent conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan soldiers and regiments drawn from Norther Ireland continue to play a role.
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Copyright © 2014 Seosamh Mac Coılle
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Arts For All (Fb | web) is a community arts organization in north Belfast, sponsoring workshops and events, giving space to artists-in-residence, and putting on exhibits in its John Luke Gallery. The image above is of the mural on the side of their own building on the York Road, painted in 2012 by JMK (Jonny McKerr) and DMC (Dermot McConaghy) – their signatures can be seen on the brickwork at the right. Arts For All were also one of the sponsors of the recent WWI mural by Jonny in Tigers Bay: The Home Front.
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