Bonfire break-dancers and bouquet-throwing rioters outside the Woodbourne PSNI station, as well as a lambeg drum side-by-side with a bodhrán and “Only God can judge me”, here used (probably) as an anti-suicide message rather than as an excuse to take the law into one’s own hands.
Samson and Goliath, the cranes of the Harland & Wolff shipyard in east Belfast, stand alongside crosses on the burial grounds of the 36th (Ulster) Division in Flanders (though Cave Hill might be in the background) in this Flora Street mural in east Belfast. UVF flags fly overhead. One of the cranes can be seen in the background of the wide shot, below.
On the headstone in the front-middle is written “Francis Lemon 1916”, perhaps this Francis Lemon, from Ballymacarrett, who died on July 2nd: FindAGrave | IWM.
Work by Dublin-based street artist Le Bas for CNB15 in Kent Street: a hand-drawn abstract, repeating design against a yellow background with jagged white lines over the top.
Michael “Mickey” (though here “Micky”) Devine was red-headed and was a founder member of the Irish Republican Socialist Party (IRSP) in his native Derry (The Plough & The Stars) and also of the INLA (IRSP Derry). The mural on the gable shown above includes the socialist symbols of the red star and the plough, great bear (ursa major), or “big dipper” shining over the towers of Long Kesh, where Devine died on the 21st of August, 1981, after 60 days on hunger strike, the tenth and final striker to die.
The writing that can be seen faintly in the lower third (from a previous version of the mural) reads “They have served their British masters, the poor pathetic fools. They think that inhumanity and cruelty can break us. Haven’t they learnt anything? It strengthens us, it drives us on, for then more than ever we know that our cause is just. INLA Vol. Micky Devine, Long Kesh 1981”
From an image of the city hall in flames during the week, we move to a city hall floating away on kites and being swept away by waves: “It might become conceivable that the prejudices and postures of the past could be swept away”. Both this city hall and the previous one were drawn by Ailie O’Hagan. We also below have a BA in a banshee studies from Queens by Jamie Baird. Both are part of the panels drawn during CNB15 in the Waring Street alley. The full squad also included Conor McClure, Martina Scott, Aaron Cushley, Chris Ellis, Laura Robinson, William Woods, Kevin Conaghan and the crew from Jackalope.
Update: the piece was soon (by mid-November) “vandalised” by JJ’s “Know no fear”:
While we’re at it, here’s another JJ piece, “Bring the war!” from Harbour Promenade …
Mural in Derry commemorating members of Na Fıanna Éıreann, the youth wing of the IRA. The names are listed in the order of death, from earliest to latest, beginning with fifteen-year-old Gerald McAuley who was shot dead in Clonard (Belfast) in 1969, and ending with John Dempsey shot on the Falls Road (Belfast) in 1981.
The quote on this new board in the Lower Shankill estate – “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, concerned citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has” – is attributed to “Margaret Mead, American Author 1901-1978”. Mead in fact was best known as an anthropologist and in particular for her study of adolescent coming-of-age in the islands of Samoa which concluded that adolescence there was not at all the stressful and confused period that it was Western teens.
This mural featuring the rights of children was painted in Derry’s Brandywell area in 2014; it puts images alongside parts of Caroline Castle’s rendering of the UN’s Rights of the Child. The one above reads “Understand that all children are precious. Pick us up if we fall down and if we are lost lend us your hand. Give us things we need to make us happy and strong and always do your best for us whenever we are in your care. Right no. 3”.
Here are three pessimistic panels from CNB15. The first (The City May Bring About Its Own Utter Downfall by Ailie O’Hagan) shows an apocalyptic scene: Belfast city hall in flames while Godzilla rampages. The second shows artists in hoodies and face-masks stealing through the city with brushes and a camera. (Yesterday (Nov. 3rd) saw a march on Stormont to protest cuts in arts funding. See Twitter | BBC-NI) The third has a giraffe in a fishbowl helmet ‘reaching for the stars’ but beneath it is written “Politics is the art of the possible, except in Northern Ireland”.