Paddy Duffy Collection

The Friend At Hand

2022-12-302024-08-26Extramural ActivityLeave a comment

Easter marks the unofficial start of the PUL marching season, with many marches today by various Apprentice Boys bands. The season runs until the end of August, with a high point around July 12th (Parades Commission | CAIN calendar). The painting above (by Ciaran Gallagher (ig) in the Dark Horse courtyard for a nine-part series called The Friend At Hand) packs in many familiar tropes: King Billy on a banner, kerb-stones painted red-white-and-blue, the Israeli flag flying from a lamp-post, and a bottle of Buckfast lying in the gutter. Decorating the skin, however, is rare, and the use of Irish – “an cara ıdır lamha [lámha]” [“in aıce láımhe” or “ag an láımh”] – on a Lambeg drum is unknown.

The other panels in the group of three show a boxer being attended to in his corner at the King’s Hall and a masked man leaving the EU and heading for Mexico off with an ATM in the bucket of an excavator.

Six more are included together, below: a fisherman is rescued from drowning; a medic attended to an injured player; the Samaritans helpline; a firefighter carries two people from a burning building; a surgeon operates; a chaplain reads to troops.

Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2022/2023/2024 Paddy Duffy
T01691 T01665 T01692 [T01684]
T03188 T03189 T03190 T03191 T03192 T03193 T03194
T04270

The Dark Horse

2022-12-302024-10-03Extramural ActivityLeave a comment

Here is a gallery of many of the pieces in the courtyard of the Dark Horse bar in Belfast city centre, presented in clockwise order from the entrance on Commercial Court.

Above and immediately below: the scene in the Klondyke Bar. Links to additional pieces can be found at their appropriate places in the “rotation”, below.

Martin McGuinness and Ian Paisley in the clouds

Belfast Stripped Bare – a view into people’s houses by Ciaran Gallagher (web); many of the painted pieces in the yard are by Gallagher.

McBride’s

[The Friend At Hand x7]

Middle/Back Wall

The Hill Street Bar Band by Glen Molloy (Fb) and various famous faces in upstairs windows by Gallagher

Broo Queue

Middle Wall, lowest level

Titanic

The Rapparees

George Best

Right wall

Stephen Nolan

A variety of vintage advertisements from the late 1800s and early 1900s: Lloyd & Yorath’s stout (Newport, Wales), Hall’s paints (Hull), Guinness, Gold Flake tobacco (in both English and Irish: Sásuíonn sıad!), Batey’s ginger beer (London), Gilbey’s wines, Mew’s brewery (Isle of Wight).

“Ourma says if you stick t’herown diet of land-an-dairy prod you’ll be firmanna an’trim down” – a saying in which the names of all six Northern Irish counties are (phonetically) included.

[The Friend At Hand x3]

Entrance Wall:

[Happy Halloween]

Poets And Authors

[Four Horsemen]

Warehouses

Poems:

Click image to enlarge
Copyright © 2022/2023 Paddy Duffy
Left: T01687 T01686 T03185 T01680 T01679 T01678 [T03196] T01677 T01676 [T01685]
Middle: T01671 T04271 T01673 T01672 T01670 T01674 T01669 T01667 T01668
Right: T01697 T01666 T01690 T01689 [T01696]
Poets: T01693 T01694 T01695
Warehouses: T01681
Poems: T01698 T01664

The Sacrifice Remains The Same

2022-12-282025-06-21Extramural ActivityLeave a comment

“Time changes! But the sacrifice remains the same.” The board shows, in black and white, a WWI soldier, who is comforting another solider, in modern gear and in colour. The emblems of the 36th (Ulster) division and Royal Irish Rifles are also shown. Sponsored by the EU and the Cosy Somme Association. This is a repainted version of the original (late 2013) board which had faded badly.

The same board, at smaller scale, can also be found on Whitehead Orange hall.

Ogilvie Street, east Belfast

Bang Up To Date

2022-12-282024-08-26Extramural ActivityLeave a comment

The previous UVF mural in Carrington Street (Volunteering | On Your Side) was paint-bombed in October, 2020, (Keep It Local) but was quickly replaced by this computer-generated board showing the Harland & Wolff cranes, a Long Kesh watch-tower, and a hooded gunman from the UVF’s East Belfast Battalion.

Carrington Street, east Belfast

Political Leaders Are Not Listening

2022-12-192024-08-26Extramural ActivityLeave a comment

Left: After a break for the funeral of the Duke Of Edinburgh, the Loyalist Communities Council has resumed its protest of Brexit with a banner campaign (Irish News). The banner seems to be offering viewers the choice of one of four affiliations (“Europe – UK – USA – Ireland – choose one or the other! It’s your decision!) but the “correct” answer is at the bottom (and in the faded background of the Covenant): “Ulster is British and this we will always maintain!” even though “Political leaders are not listening!” (including, perhaps, Arlene Foster and the DUP.) The Belfast Agreement (Good Friday Agreement) allows people in Northern Ireland to identify themselves as Irish, British, or both.

Right: “Peace or protocol – it’s your decision”, aimed at Leo Varadkar on the day that he again became Taoiseach (Irish Times) and repeating his words back to him from a speech in 2018: “The possibility of a return to violence is very real”. At that meeting, Varadkar was anticipating violence by anti-Agreement republicans in response to customs posts on the Ireland-Northern Ireland border, and brought a newspaper describing the death of four customs officials, two lorry drivers, and three IRA volunteers at a Monaghan post in 1972 (BelTel).

The authors of this poster are not known, but the parallel statement (mutatis mutandis) would be that anti-Protocol agents – perhaps the “young loyalists” that the UVF “can no longer contain” (UK Daily; see also RTÉ from November) – might return to acts of violence such as the 1974 “Dublin & Monaghan Bombings” that killed 33 people – in the background of the poster is part of a photograph (included below) of bomb damage in Talbot Street – if the Protocol’s “Irish Sea border” is not removed.

Ballysillan Road and (below) Oakmount Drive (near Mount Vernon), north Belfast.

Dreaming

2022-12-182025-10-24Extramural ActivityLeave a comment

Street art by Kitsune (ig) in Queen St (official title When You Weren’t Looking), for Hit The North 2022.

Queen Street, Belfast city centre

The Glorious Dead

2022-12-182024-08-16Extramural ActivityLeave a comment

Four of the 700 NHS staff in the UK to die of Covid during the pandemic have come Northern Ireland, the most recent being dementia specialist Alan Henry in Antrim hospital (Express | BelTel | iTV). In the south, Defence Forces have been deployed to three nursing homes while 6,400 health workers are off sick (Irish Times). The mural above shows a masked nurse and doctor among a field of poppies. It has been added below the three painted boards commemorating Titanic, the Somme, and the WWII Blitz.

On the exterior of the Connswater Community Centre, east Belfast