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
The road in Glynn is painted with loyal emblems and slogans: on one side of a red hand in a six-pointed star, “God save our Queen” with the Union Flag, and on the other “No surrender – 1690” with the constituent flags of England (St George’s Cross), Scotland (St Andrew’s Saltire), and Ireland (St Patrick’s Cross). Above the road painting is the arch, on one side of which is the traditional King Billy and on the other a soldier (perhaps covering both WWI and the B Specials & UDR) standing in front of a cross.
The Bellevue steps lead from the Antrim Road to Floral Hall, which served as a concert and dance hall before closing in 1973 and since becoming dilapidated. There have been various plans and calls for redevelopment, even in the last five years (one | two | three) and there is a Facebook group dedicated to restoring Floral Hall, but nothing has happened. As the wide shot (below) shows, the famous steps too are overgrown; the facade at least has been painted with zoo animals, by London artist Irony (ig) (Belfast Media). The lion’s name is Quays (Zoo); the giraffe is called Ballyronan (BelTel); the flamingos’ names are unknown.
A march took place this past Saturday (July 9th, 2022) to mark the 50th anniversary of the Springhill-Westrock massacre, in which five people were killed by the British Army. A new inquest was directed by the AG in 2014 but has been repeatedly delayed; it is scheduled to begin next year (Belfast Live).
The march was organised by the Springhill-Westrock Campaign (Fb | tw); it began at the memorial plaque in Springhill and ended at the memorial garden in Westrock (Irish News). See also Keep On Praying.
The mural shows the pre-fab aluminium bungalows built in Westrock in 1949.
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).