Two Scottish street artists, Conzo Throb from Glasgow and Elph from Edinburgh, combined to produce the street art above. It features Elph’s distinctive psychedelic landscapes with Conzo’s Taps Aff, with Terror Cheb protruding. (A wide shot is below.) They also each did an individual piece for CNB14: see previously Fill Up On Colour (Conzo Throb) and The Imaginarium (Elph) as well as Elph’s work for the Menagerie bar in The Piano Has Been Smoking and Eyes Wide Shut.
The mural above pairs the emblem of Celtic – a Scottish team – with a former emblem of the FAI – the governing body for the Republic’s national team (and, at the time this mural was painted (2002 according to CAIN), league football in the South). Celtic shoulders the footballing dreams of many Northern Ireland nationalists, which is perhaps why, below the flags of Scotland and Ireland, what should be “Albain agus Éıre” is in fact “Albaın agus eıre”: Scotland and a burden.
The local New Lodge GAA club Cumman An Phıarsaıgh is named in honour of Patrick Pearse, executed after the 1916 rising. The club’s new mural features footballers contesting a ball and Pearse’s image appears at the centre of a celtic cross along with part of his 1912 poem Mıse Éıre in the bottom corner (shown below in a close-up). Painted by Lucas Quigley and Michael Doherty. Replaces New Lodge 2000.
Mıse Éıre: Sıne mé na an Chaılleach Bhéarra. Mór mo ghlóır: Mé a rug Cú Chulaınn croga. Mór mo náır: Mo chlann féın a dhíol a máthaır. [Mór mo phıan: Bıthnaımhde do mo shíorchıapadh. Mór mo bhrón: D’éag an dream ınar chuıreas dóchas.] Mıse Éıre: Uaıgní mé ná an Chaılleach Bhéarra.
I am Ireland: I am older than the old woman of Beare. Great my glory: I who bore Cuchulainn, the brave. Great my shame: My own children who sold their mother. [Great my pain: My irreconcilable enemy who harasses me continually. Great my sorrow: That crowd, in whom I placed my trust, died.] I am Ireland: I am lonelier than the old woman of Beare.
“Women have been trained to speak softly and carry a lipstick. Those days are over.” (Bella Abzug).
Above is a board on the Donegall Road bridge showing women drumming up an audience for a suffragette meeting in the Ulster Hall in November 1912. The image in the bottom right is of Emmeline Pankhurst being arrested in London in 1914; the top image is of Pankhurst on tour in the US in 1913 (LoC; see Pieces Of History for a description of the tour; she gave a speech entitled ‘Freedom Or Death’). Pankhurst spoke in Belfast at the 1912 meeting, though the speakers advertised on the placards are “Mrs Charlotte Despard, Miss Irene Miller, Mrs Edith How-Martyn, Miss Alison Neilans“.
The first suffrage group in Ireland was the North Of Ireland Women’s Suffrage Society, founded in Belfast in 1872 by Isabella Tod.
At all of 19 years old, Cinderella on the stairs holds rank over her younger stable-mates in this panel from the ‘Disney Princesses’ mural in the Slıabh Dubh estate. (Among the Disney court, only Frozen‘s Elsa is older, at 21, though at the time of writing she is not officially a Disney Princess. Snow White was 14.) From left to right, the princesses and their familiars shown are: Fa Mulan, Aurora (from Sleeping Beauty), Belle (from Beauty And The Beast), Tiana (from The Princess And The Frog),Max (the dog from Little Mermaid), and the two Cinderella mice, Jaq and Gus.
For images of Ariel, Snow White and the wicked witch, and Anna from Frozen, see Look Behind You!
Above is the third panel from a recent (2014-07) mural advertising the Ardoyne Association, whose office is just down the street. As the shot of the full mural shows, asking for advice and help with debt will make it finally stop raining (and turn you blonde?). Some images of the mural in progress, painted by Michael Doherty, can be found at the Association’s Facebook page.
Here are two new boards in the courtyard of the Rex Bar on the Shankill Road, describing the formation of the Ulster Volunteers (‘A Force For Ulster’) and commemorating the losses suffered by the 36th (Ulster) Division of the British Army, which the Volunteers became, at the Somme and in other battles, mowed down by “the Hun machine guns” (‘The Great War’).
‘A Force For Ulster’ includes photographs of the recent centenary re-enactments of the Balmoral Review, the Ulster Covenant, the formation of the Volunteers (“east” and “west”) and “Operation Lion” – more commonly known as the Larne Gun-Running.
According to the ‘The Great War’ board, 32,186 men from west Belfast were killed, wounded, or missing. “To them bravery was without limit, to us memory is without end”. The board shows the Thiepval Memorial To The Missing Of The Somme against a background of portraits.
Above is a recent mural by Damian Walker in the New Lodge, in support of republican prisoners in Maghaberry, showing a single shirtless prisoner with a flower (? – see the close-up below) surrounded by three baton-wielding officers. Sponsored the 32-County Sovereignty Movement (web).
The fairy-tale covering painted over an LVF “North Belfast Rat Pack” mural is fading away to reveal the previous work. For the original LVF mural, see D01199.
The graffiti on the wall (see the third image, below, of the whole wall) – Welcome to LVF Land – has itself been scored out. There is also anti-LVF graffiti in the street.
The Elms/The Globe/The Elms/The Club is making way for a Tesco Express (Tele). Above is the bloodshot eyeball street art (by KVLR? – please confirm) that adorned the tradesman’s entrance of the bar in its most recent incarnation.
Extramural Activity 