“Saint Malachy’s G.A.C. is more than a club. It’s our club. To participate is to represent your community and an expression of your cultural identity.”
A mural celebrating Gaelic games in the parish of St. Malachy/Naomh Maolmhaodhóg, in the Markets area of Belfast. The parish church – featured in the top centre – has a celebrated fan-vaulted ceiling (WP). This mural, on the other hand, features a highly unusual bay window.
A partly commercial, partly political, mural on the Abercorn Bar, Abercorn Road, London-/Derry/Doire. The figures with outstretched hands are a copy of Maurice Harron’s ‘Hands of Peace’ statue, which is at the roundabout roughly 250m away (where the bridge in the picture lands on the city-side of the Foyle river; the location of the pub is up the hill to the left). He has made a great deal of other interesting work too – check out the video of him at work on his web site.
As a member of the IRA, Price was jailed for the Old Bailey bombing in 1973, and her post-Agreement license was revoked in May, 2011, when she was charged, as a member of the Real IRA, in connection with the Massereene Barracks shooting of 2009 – she was sent to Maghaberry. IRPWA graffiti in Gartan Square, and at the Eastway roundabout, Derry.
Free Derry Corner, flying a tricolour, is at the centre of some wild-style writing, with BRY [Bogside Republican Youth] graffiti. On the Bogside shops.
This is the sixth mural by the Bogside Artists, commemorating the hunger strike. The main figure is Raymond McCartney, shown after 53 days on hunger strike in 1980; the female figure is perhaps Mary Doyle (the other two female strikers were Maıréad Farrell and Maıréad Nugent).
“Eastway Wall Art Project – a Re-Imaging Communities Programme – aims to help all communities in urban areas tackle the visible signs of sectarianism and racism and to create a positive welcoming environment for everyone. Living gallery envisaged by Creggan Enterprises and created by Guildhall Press & Tom Agnew. Signage and artwork fabricated locally by Globaltech. [acknowledgements] The Eastway Wall itself has undergone major refurbishment including the construction of two new pillars to frame the wall. The lower Eastway natural-stone tower maintains the historical link between Rath Mór and the Grianán of Aileach ring fort in Donegal. The higher Eastway structure comprises two sections of a factory chimney stack once located on the nearby Bligh’s Lane site and demolished in 2008. This was added to preserve an important link with the area’s industrial heritage.”
The image above shows the second through the eighth panel. A few of the info boards, including the main one, are shown below. (For the Creggan Story and its info board, see M05174.)
Above the panels shown, some panels just have single words in them – for five of these see Vibrant.
March 2013 is the 25th anniversary of the Michael Stone’s attack on mourners attending the burials of the Gibraltar 3 in Milltown cemetery. Stone killed three people. The mural combines images of mourners taking shelter from Stone’s attack with the civil war memorial in Ballyseedy, Co. Kerry (WP) which was famously connected to the Gibraltar 3 in a mural prepared for the return of the coffins to Belfast – see A Legitimate Right To Take Up Arms. (Here is a copy of Tragedies In Kerry.) Images of the mural in progress were presented in a previous entry. (See that post for the photographs on which the mural is based.) The Gibraltar 3 are portrayed on the left; Stone’s victims are on the right. In the top right is an IRA volunteer who had been shot two days earlier, on the night that the coffins of the Gibraltar 3 arrived in Belfast.
25 years ago – 1988 – puts us firmly in the era of video, and so you can see footage on youtube relating to each of these events:
Death On The Rock, a famous Thames Television production about the SAS killings of IRA members Maıréad Farrell, Danny McCann and Seán Savage on March 6th in Gibraltar.
Michael Stone’s attack on mourners at their funerals in Milltown cemetery, March 16th, which killed Thomas McErlean, John Murray, and Caoımhín Mac Brádaıgh (Kevin Brady).
The memorial depicted in the background of the mural is a civil war memorial in Ballyseedy, Co. Kerry (WP) which was famously connected to the Gibraltar 3 in a mural prepared for the return of the coffins to Belfast – see A Legitimate Right To Take Up Arms. Here is a copy of Tragedies In Kerry.
Two new murals are going up side-by-side on the International Wall (Divis St.), a bookmark-style one for Marian Price and a large piece commemorating three IRA members killed in Gibraltar on March 6, 1988 (WP), IRA member Kevin McCracken who was killed on March 14th in Belfast, and the three who were killed by Michael Stone at the funerals of the ‘Gibraltar Three’ in Milltown cemetery, Belfast/Béal Feırste, on March 16th (WP).
We’ll have the finished pieces in a few days. Below, a wide shot of the Milltown scene, in progress, and below that, Marty Lyons working from a photograph of the incident, perhaps this second in this set, on which the left side of the mural is based, while the center and right-hand side are based on this one (by Bobby Ingram).
In 2008 and 2009 artist Raymond Henshaw completed a series of cultural murals about the Markets area of Belfast. This one showcases the people of the Markets. The others are: Portraits | Social History | Sport & Culture | Bars | Industry
Two of the images – bottom right and two spots above it – show a street party to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the death of Robert Emmet in 1953. For a mural from that occasion (in Ardoyne) see Visual History 02.
Extramural Activity 