City/Town

Circus Fools

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This Saturday and Sunday (June 20th and 21st), Belfast Community Circus celebrates its 30th birthday with two days of events and performances in the Cathedral Quarter, including a world record-breaking (hopefully) pie fight. Kev Largey (KVLR) last month placed two “foolish” figures among the acrobats on the front wall of the organization’s Gordon Street headquarters, a lobster having a drink of weasels wearing hats and a rambler with a patched bed-roll and basket of spray-cans. (Also seen in paste-up form outside the Sunflower – see Costume Party.)

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Gitmo Beach & Spa

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13 years after the military prison opened, Guantanamo Bay Naval Base is home to various detainees from around the Middle East as well as US service-men and women who (unlike the prisoners) can avail themselves of the fine beaches and the McDonalds, Taco Bell, Subway and other fast-food restaurants. Their living conditions are documented by Debi Cornwall in an exhibition at the Belfast Photo Festival; the images are housed in a shipping container in front of St. Anne’s cathedral. A piece from Alma Haser‘s Cosmic Surgery series can be seen in the centre of the wide shot, below.

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X02655 X02656 X02657 alleged enemy combatants war on terror held without charge trial conviction counting every normal american convenience is now available to personnel “best-kept secret in the military” images already emblazoned on our collective consciousness the orange jumpsuits the barbed wire and explores the fun amidst the tedium in the residential and leisure spaces of prisoners and guards

Giving The City A Human Face

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June brings the Belfast Photo Festival (4th-30th), including the work of Mentalgassi, a German trio that wraps street poles and other urban objects with black-and-white images of humans. In Belfast, they have covered the three buoys in the park beside the Art College. For shots of the buoys being covered, see the group’s Fb page.

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Space Exploration

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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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Making Changes

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The history of music is told (from right to left) in a new mural. The gramophone gives way to the cassette and then to the CD and finally the iPod, with a mic and speakers in the middle. The suggestion, presumably, is that life in east Belfast also changes. From Blaze FX, who also did the Teenage Dreams repaint on the other side of the flyover, and local youths from both Short Strand and Newtownards Road.

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Costume Party

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Union Street paste-ups, opposite the Sunflower, showing (in costume) a lobster with wine-glass, a hiker with a bed-roll, a cow (Moomin?) in admiral’s hat, and an old-west character scanning the horizon with a spyglass.

For another version of the child-with-rose, see Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary.

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The Priest & The Cobbler

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2015-05-28 ClonardDetail+

This new mural pays tribute to two long-time residents of Clonard. On a good day, Noel Fitzpatrick, a cobbler with a little shop on the corner of Odessa and Clonard streets, would take his chair out into the street and play the uıleann pipes. Looking down from above is Alec Reid, the Redemptorist priest who spent 40 years at Clonard monastery and played an important role in the peace process. He died in 2013 at age 82. (WP)

Painted by Marty Lyons & Mickey Doc in Springfield Drive. For the large ‘flower’ mural to the left of this mural (which imitates the stained glass in the cathedral), see C01044.

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The Hopewell Gallery

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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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Snug As A Gun

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2015-06-02 Alexandra1+

Seamus Heaney took up the pen where his father and grandfather had worked with the spade. A copy of his poem Digging was, along with others, placed on the Alexandra Park “peace” line but has been torn off in favor of the preferred mode of expression of the next generation: the spray can.

For more Heaney as public art, see The Hunting Heart.

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End Degrading Strip Searches

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“End degrading strip searches in Maghaberry now”. Cogús (Fb) is the RNU’s ‘Republican Prisoner Welfare And Support’ association.

The board on the Oldpark Road, north Belfast.

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