URBAN EXPRESSION AND SOME DEPRESSION AND A BLAST FROM THE PAST – BELFAST SEPTEMBER 2021
This series could well be described as a blast from the past as it is now 25th April 2022 but I am still recovering from Covid-19 restrictions and I have a huge catalogue of unpublished photographs.
As all photographs are geo-tagged, since 2020, I have decided that there is no real need to identify the exact locations for the majority of the artworks.
As already mentioned my activities back in 2021 were constrained by Covid-19 restrictions and when I returned home I dropped a 20T storage unit, that was a major setback, and lost many of the images resulting from my two day visit to Belfast and much more. After a lot of trial and effort I have managed to recover all files.
BLACKSTAFF SQUARE – DISAPPEARANCE OF A SCULPTURE AND A CLOCK
In 2021 a plan to transform the Linen Quarter in Belfast City Centre over a period of six months. The plan included a new social hub for Brunswick Street with a container café/bistro, open air seating, outdoor stage and a games area when I visited in March 2022 the project was close to completion.
There is what could be described as a small public space bounded by Amelia Street and Brunswick Street. Google Maps does not show its name but it is known as Blackstaff Square which is the result of the redevelopment of what was a at one stage a bomb site and according to some locals that I met it was a well-known site for on-the-street drinking.
Over the years the square has changed and this year two features that I like are no more. One was a stand-alone public clock and the other was a bronze and fibreglass sculpture by Anna Cheyne [1926 – 2002], representing the regeneration of the city of Belfast and therefore called “Regeneration”. Anna Cheyne’s family might not be too pleased by the fact that her work in Blackstaff Square is not much mentioned in tourist guides or by the fact that it was usually surrounded by litter and empty beer bottles. I am willing to bet that few people ever noticed it.
A Monument to the Unknown Woman Worker is a 1992 sculpture by Louise Walsh is located nearby outside the Europa Hotel. The original commission, in the late 1980s, was for an artwork to reflect the nearby Amelia Street’s history as a red-light district. Walsh’s design “Monument to the Unknown Woman Worker” was accepted by the project’s landscape architect and the Art in Public Spaces Research Group, however the Belfast Development Office and the Belfast City Council opposed the project and the selected design, and the project was dropped in 1989. A few years later a private developer recommissioned the work and it was erected in 1992 outside the Europa Hotel.
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