There’s no official title to this set of overlapping masks by Shane O’Malley for HTN22. Shane’s piece replaces One Love Louis’s ‘Monkey’ from 2015. The five new pieces of wild-style that are also on the west side of Library Street are included below.
The Vault Artists’ car boot sale is this Sunday, from noon until five, in the car-park of their premises on Tower Street. The old Met building has served as a home for about 120 artists of all kinds since 2018 but they are now looking for new digs (Belfast Live) as early as March, 2023 – the site will be razed and turned into social and affordable housing. Here’s a 14-tweet thread on the impending move. Suggestions for new places are welcome, to future at vaultartiststudios.com.
The sale this weekend serves as a fund-raiser. The car-park is ringed by murals, including those included today, from FGB (ig) (the welder, mushroom, Oui Poutine, and Joy – with Rob Hilken), unknown (Show Some Love lettering, with “Love” having been painted over), NEUF and KVLR (ig) who painted the Lucha Libre wrestlers), and Leo Boyd (web) (L’Absurde and Belfast Kitty Hall).
? , ? , Ruth Cruthers, Kerrie Hanna, Hannah Smith, ?Ruth Cruthers?, Leo Boyd, Leo Boyd, Jonathan Brennan
(r) FGB, Rob Hilken, Sally O’Dowd
FGB, Dragoș Mușat, Conor McClure, ?Margaret Woods Moore? replacing an earlier Leo Boyd piece, FGB, Sally O’Dowd, Kerrie Hannah
Here is the HTN22 street art and writing along Union Street, Belfast, west of Kent Street, in sequence from east to west. The pieces are by Nial.OL (ig), JMK (ig), Kenz (ig) (whose piece is entitled ‘Love, Loss, And Beyond’), KMG (ig), Inkie (ig), Aches (ig), and Homer Simpson with Garfield legs by Bust (ig) whose large piece can also be seen, in the background of the third image (and was featured previously in Belfast Or Bust).
Here, in sequence, are the HTN22 pieces on Union Street to the east of Kent Street, with work by Razer (ig) (reproducing a Judah Passow photograph from Divis flats), NOYS (ig), Irony (ig), KVLR (ig), Lobster Robin (ig), Friz (ig), Shane Ha (ig), and Ink Fun (ig). ADW’s 2016 piece Keep Her Lit completes the wall.
Here, in sequence, are the HTN22 pieces on the west side of Kent Street, above the gates into the construction site: unicorns from Zurdie (ig), Not Pop (ig), ‘Hope Never Dies’ from Glen Molloy (ig), sushi from Zippy (ig), FGB (ig), ‘The Belle Of Belfast City’ from Alana McDowell (ig), Leo Boyd (ig), Codo (ig).
In sequence, here is the east side of Kent Street, below Union Street. This wall begins with emic’s 3-D hands and then the new (HTN22) pieces begin: Claire Provoust (ig), Holly Pereira (ig), DMC, ADW (ig) (this piece was featured previously in Spring Into Art), Det + Mash, Omin + Oner + Kone, Vents (below Biggie Smalls in Only Love Can Save Us). The Codo piece from last year is still on the shutters at the end (see Before An Audience).
The Ireland Supports The People Of Donetsk graffiti outside the RVH has been modified, perhaps twice. Most prominent is a the writing by MASH (of TMN krew) – highly unusual appearance by a tagger on a central thoroughfare (and in west Belfast, too).
It is possible is that the “Free Ukraine” in the bottom left was an earlier response to the original graffiti. It is not clear why “Free” has been x-ed out.
Support for either Ukraine or Russia in CNR areas is non-existent, perhaps because of anti-imperial attitude applied – in equal but opposite measure – to both NATO and Russia. At the beginning of the conflict, Sinn Féin deleted thousands of comments critical of the EU’s or NATO’s stance towards Russia from its web site (Indo | Irish Times | journal.ie | see also Irish Examiner).
These are the murals from HTN22 in Kent Street above Union Street, by (in order) Hixxy (web), TMN krew, Rob Hilken (web), Curtis Hylton (web), Bad Belfast (ig) – punning on the Irish myth of the Children Of Lear.
Unfortunately we don’t have any information about this lettering in Hill Street. It looks a lot like a Laura Nelson (ig) production, but please get in touch if you can shed any light on it.