painted wall

Out There

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Hit The North returns this weekend with more than fifty street artists painting in the city centre (Seedhead Arts). The main painting session will be on Sunday between 2 and 6 around the Sunflower bar at the junction of Union Street and Kent Street.

As an apéritif many local artists painted on the “Belfast Stories” hoarding along North Street in mid-April. Shown here are the fifteen pieces produced, from left to right/north to south, by …

Conor McClure (ig)
Lost Lines (ig)
Ana Fish (web)
Wee Nuls (web)
Zippy (web)
Kerrie Hanna (web)
HMC (web) who painted Shiela the elephant, who was also the subject of a piece by DanLeo
FGB (web)
Katriona (web)
Illoustrates (ig)
Jacky Sheridan (web)
All The Doodz (ig)
KVLR (web)
Kilian (ig)
Graffic Belfast (ig)

For the previous art on these hoardings, see ‘Bout Ye?

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William McFadzean

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“‘Rubicon’ – the family home of Pte. William F. McFadzean, Victoria Cross, who gave his life to save his comrades at Thiepval Wood on 1st July 1916 immediately prior to the Battle Of The Somme.” – McFadzean died when he threw himself on a fallen box of grenades.

For his heroism, Billy McFadzean (14th RIR) was awarded the VC (WP). The other VC winners pictured alongside McFadzean in the Cappagh Gardens mural (above and immediately below) are G[eoffrey St. George Shillington] Cather, R[obert] Quigg, and E[ric] N[orman] F[rankland] Bell.

The Family home was on Cregagh Road at Cregagh Park – there’s a picture of McFadzean standing outside the house at Royal Irish. The “blue plaque” is the most recent addition to the scene.

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When A Plan Comes Together

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“I love it when a plan comes together” was the catch-phrase of Hannibal Smith, leader of the (fictional) A-Team, a crew of US soldiers from the Viet Nam war, on the run from the military police and working as hired guns back in the States, in the US television show of the same name. The font used in “THE FA TEAM” (below), like the font used in the show’s title card and credits, imitates military stencils.

There were 98 episodes of the action-series (WP), and it felt as though at least 97 of them involved the gang’s GMC Vandura van being turned into an armed vehicle and used in a spectacular, guns-blazing, escape from and/or assault on the bad guys, assisted by daredevil helicopter-flying by Howling Mad Murdock. Both vehicles have been modified in the Foreign Assassins (Fb) graffiti art shown here with spray cans that are firing their caps as missiles.

The art replaces Stranger Kings on the Comber Greenway in east Belfast.

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The Holywood Arches

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The area around the junction of the Newtownards Road and the Holywood Road in east Belfast is known as the “Holywood Arches”. The name comes from the fact that – up until 1950 – the old Belfast & County Down railway line from Comber (and beyond that from Newtownards or Newcastle) crossed over both streets on top of two large arches, wide enough to allow traffic in both directions and tall enough to accommodate double-decker buses (see e.g. this image on Pinterest).

This mural is on the shutters of the nearby Arches Café (web); the vintage photograph reproduced can be seen in this pdf from Eastside Partnership.

See also: Step Back In Time about a train crash in 1945 at Ballymacarrett station (on the Bangor line) that killed 22.

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The Main Man

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“The Main Man” is John (“Wee John”) McKillop, a life-long super-fan of the Ruaırí Óg teams who died at the end of July 2023 at the age of 60 (Saffron Gael | BelTel). This is a repainting of the mural on the side of the Lurig Inn (Fb) in Cushendall; for the previous version, including information about the scene depicted, see Bound Together from 2023.

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Grand Masters

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Shane Lowry won the Open golf championship in 2019, his only “major” win so far. He is still in with a chance at the Masters, which concludes today, though he is seven strokes behind leader Rory McIlroy; Lowry tees off at 7 and McIlroy at 7:30 p.m.

2019 was the last time the Open was played at Royal Portrush. This mural was painted by Peaball (web) on Causeway Street, near the club, last July (2024), a year before the Open will return to the course (July 17th-20th).

Also in Portrush: Graeme McDowell.

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George Best

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George Best began his international career at the age of 20, in 1964, playing six matches that year in the green shirt of Northern Ireland, and scoring goals against Switzerland and Scotland in November.

This mural depicts a very young Best, perhaps circa 1967; the source image is unknown – Best typically parted his hair from the left and exposed his teeth. The piece was painted by ACE Sprayworks (web), with support from Warren Anderson Tiling, at Anderson’s home near Cloughmills. (Sunday World)

Best was a familiar figure in the first wave of re-imaging (see Visual History 10).

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Shrunken Heads

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Here is a gallery of images from the Project 24 space along Queen’s Parade in Bangor, whose east wall is frequently painted by local street artists (see the links below for an attempt to keep track of all of the activity).

From top to bottom, these pieces are by Imogen Donegan (ig) and Ana Fish (web), Etchaflesh (web), Keyto (ig) x2, Codo (ig), Ana Fish and HMC (web), Sharon Regan (web).

2024-11 Zoom
2024-04 How About This For Art?
2023-11 Stop Ruining Art
2023-04 Around Every Corner
2023-01 This Is Not The Same As Every Day

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