Joe Caslin (web) with a poem by Sean Watmore (web) entitled Mind Your Whisht: If lives you talk of are not your own/Whose actions don’t affect you//If existence causes you distress/Your own must be a virtue//Please heed the words my Grandad said/To those who judged another//’Mind your whisht’ and walk away/We’re all in this together.
In Talbot Street for Hit The North 2025 (Seedhead Arts).
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Copyright © 2025 Paddy Duffy
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Here are two paste-ups from illustrator and artist DEID (web) in Belfast city centre.
Above: “Be a bastard – tag yer local electrical box.”
Below: MAGA red-hats with an upside-down Stars And Stripes bring to mind David Bowie’s 1997 song “I’m afraid of Americans” (youtube).
There are more DEID stickers and paste-ups in the Seosamh Mac Coılle collection.
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Copyright © 2024/2025 Paddy Duffy
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For Recycle Week 2021 (WRAP), Laura Nelson (ig) and Leo Boyd (web) installed a series of seven pieces (each a combination of sign-writing and paste-up) on the abandoned Fanum House, using CO2-absorbing paint (from Graphenstone) and a potato-based glue for the paste-ups. “A revolution in recycling!”
The X-Wing Land-Rover was a later addition, on top of one of the original paste-ups.
Great Victoria Street and Ventry Street, Belfast city centre
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The Bank Of Ireland building at the junction of North Street and Royal Avenue was purchased by the City Council in 2021 (Business Insider) with the intention of turning it into a visitor attraction called ‘Belfast Stories’ by 2030. The latest step in the process was a period of public consultation (BelTel). In the meantime, Leo Boyd (web) has taken over the boarded-up space that previously housed the ATM with an image of space invaders hovering over the building.
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Copyright © 2025 Paddy Duffy
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The “Union Bears” are a Rangers FC “ultras” supporters club whose web page currently features the giant tifo – “sign” or “banner” is too small a word, so the Italian word is used – unveiled at various games. This much smaller display (above) is on an electrical box on the Doagh Road next to the Iceland at the eastern edge of the Rathcoole estate.
For the Sons Of KAI flute band sticker, see Kai Johansen’s Bar | Sons Of KAI | Four Lads Had A Dream.
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Copyright © 2024 Paddy Duffy
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“Stop the war on Gaza! Pray for peace!” There are doves in the upper corners but the central imagery is of a clenched fist and the background shows a republican volunteer (perhaps from the INLA) comforting a Palestinian.
For the mural that this framed image has been added to, see Clós Ard An Lao.
Clós Ard An Lao/Ardilea Close, in the Bone, north Belfast
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Copyright © 2024 Paddy Duffy
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Sugarhouse Entry, running between Waring Street and High Street, and home to the Muddlers’ Club of the United Irishmen, was closed in 1972 as part of the “ring of steel” securing Belfast city centre (DC Tours) and for fifty years served only as a back alley to various businesses between Waring Street and High Street; there was talk in 2022 of reopening it (Irish News) and again in 2023 (BelTel). It has now (August, 2024) been refurbished and reopened (BelTel | UTv includes interview with Sean Napier | Belfast City Council video on youtube).
Peter Strain (web) produced illustrations for a number of entries in 2020 and 2022, including one from 2022 for Sugarhouse Entry. It quotes United Irishman Thomas Russell as saying, “Every time I look at a lump of sugar, I see a drop of African blood”.
The precise source of the quote is unknown (please comment/get in touch if you know it); towards the end of Russell’s 1796 Letter To The People Of Ireland, in which he exhorts Irish people to develop a national spirit and take an interest in politics, he takes as a present-day example refraining from supporting the Crown in the French Revolutionary Wars by serving in the army or by buying taxed goods (such as sugar): “Are the Irish nation aware that this contest involves the question of the slave trade, the one now of the greatest consequence on the face of the earth? Are they willing to employ their treasure and their blood in support of that system, because England has 70 or 7000 millions engaged in it, the only argument that can be adduced in its favour, monstrous as it may appear? Do they know that that horrid traffic spreads its influence over the globe; that it creates and perpetuates barbarism and misery, and prevents the spreading of civilization and religion, in which we profess to believe? Do they know that by it thousands and hundreds of thousands of these miserable Africans are dragged from their innocent families … transported to various places, and there treated with such a system of cruelty, torment, wickedness and infamy, that it is impossible for language adequately to express its horror and guilt, and which would appear rather to be the work of wicked demons than of men. If this trade is wrong, is it right for the Irish nation to endeavour to continue it? And does not every man who contributes to the war contribute to its support?” (archive.org p. 22)
(Other pieces by Strain in the entries can be seen in Handsome, Easy-Going, And Utterly Untrustworthy | The Blots On The Page Are So Black | As You Lived You Must Die | Trust Women.)
See also: the Visual History page on the Belfast Entries Project.
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“‘For us there is no valid definition of socialism other than the abolition of the exploitation of one human being by another’ – Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara, Marxist revolutionary, 1928-1967.” The line comes from Che’s address at the Afro-Asian Economic conference in Algeria in 1965.
These Lasaır Dhearg (web) stencils and stickers also propose that it is “time for a socialist republic” (drawing inspiration from James Connolly) and that “the PSNI is not a normal police force” (for background see Just Don’t in the Seosamh Mac Coılle collection).
Stewartstown Road, west Belfast. For the same stencil of Connolly, though providing a better representation of the man, see Time For A Socialist Republic.
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Copyright © 2024 Paddy Duffy
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One of Lidl’s slogans (and a “corporate responsibility objective” of the company) is to work “For a better tomorrow”. The electoral-style placard above urges “Don’t vote Lidl” and alleges that the company is “funding genocide for a bleaker tomorrow” and that its “policy is to fund apartheid, occupation, genocide” – perhaps through selling Israeli-made goods – particularly wipes made by Lupilu (ig video | Fb video | Fb | Change.org) – and through its parent company Schwarz’s acquisition of an Israeli cyber-security company.
The final image is of a Lasaır Dhearg tarp in Lenadoon: “Israeli goods free zone – there are no products ‘Made in Israel’ for sale in this area”.
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Copyright © 2024 Paddy Duffy
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This is an election-campaign sticker in High Street, Newtownards, alleging co-operation between the Alliance party (whose signature colour is yellow) and the IRA, whose signature colours are the colours of the Tricolour (News Letter premium).
A similar campaign was waged in 2019 (Dunfermline Press | Jersey Evening Post).
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Copyright © 2024 Paddy Duffy
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Paddy Duffy Collection 