painted wall

Free Derry

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Free Derry Corner in red, with two new murals behind it: on the left, The Petrol Bomber, on the right, a 25th anniversary mural of Battle Of The Bogside. Lecky Road, Derry.

From Oona Woods’s Seeing Is Believing (plate 14), the red-and-yellow wall was … “A temporary transformation in 1994 by artist Colin Darke who painted the wall a socialist-related red and yellow to engender dialogue about its origins and current role in the community.” 

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Copyright © 1994 Peter Moloney
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Slán Abhaıle

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Five images of a “Slán Abhaıle” mural, with British soldiers trooping back towards London, being painted on the back of Free Derry Corner, on Lecky Road, Derry. The piece is by Robert Ballagh, taking a famous photograph of British forces in the Falklands marching (“yomping”) towards Port Stanley and placing it in a circle (to suggest a closing eye, perhaps) below tricoloured party balloons. For the original photograph, see the IWM.

The image was also produced in the Short Strand (east Belfast), in Ardoyne, north Belfast, above the Sınn Féın offices/Sıopa Na hEalaíne in west Belfast, in Shantallow (Derry), and in Letterkenny.

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Copyright © 1994 Peter Moloney
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The Petrol Bomber

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The Petrol Bomber was the first mural painted by the Bogside Artists – Kevin Hasson, Tom Kelly, and William Kelly – as part of what would become The People’s Gallery (Visual History).

It shows 13 year-old Paddy Coyle (Derry Journal) with a Molotov cocktail and wearing a gas mask (used to protect rioters against CS gas).

The Rossville flats are in the background of the mural (though not of Clive Limpkin’s original photo, included below from this gallery of Limpkin’s images of Derry 1969-1972).

Lecky Road, Bogside, Derry

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Copyright © 1994 Peter Moloney
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700 Irish Political Hostages

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A combination fist-dove smashes a line of barbed wire: “700 Irish political hostages – Release them now”. The names on the side wall: Martina Anderson, Martin Brogan, Danny Doyle, Martin O’Neill, Seamus Doherty, Adrian Kelly, Paul Kinsella, Ray McCartney, Gerry Hamilton, Paddy Villa, Jim Doherty, Don Brown, Pat McLaughlin, John Donnelly, Roy McCool, Phil Nolan, John McDevitt, Eddie McKeever

There was also a poster made of the same design.

Westland Street, Bogside, Derry

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Copyright © 1994 Peter Moloney
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Valuing Freedom More Than Life

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1994 version of the 1990 Spirit Of Freedom mural on Moyola Drive, Derry, with a faded James Connolly quote on the scroll: “There is no power on Earth [or: There is no outside force] capable of enforcing slavery on a people really resolved to be free, [and] valuing freedom more than life.”

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Copyright © 1994 Peter Moloney
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