Tag Archives: Belfast

Goodnight Belfast and Reviewing the Week 54

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My city walk was taken through the day but this photo looks across the River Lagan in Belfast later that same evening. The horizontal line of lights in the dark are christmas lights running along the crane featured near the start of the walk.

This was a Winter city walk taken on Boxing day a few years ago. There is only frost on the riverside footpath at the walk and the bare branches of trees by the crane to prove the season. However, a couple of days later the river was frozen over and covered in snow, but we had left to return to mainland Britain by that time!

Belfast Glow

Click the sound clip play button below and then the first thumbnail image to view the walk images in sequence.

City Ambience

If viewing this in an email, to see the sound player you will need to visit the blog – please click the post title to view the full post.

Frozen Footpath by the River Lagan

River Art and Sculpture

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Walking up the footpath alongside the Lagan in Belfast, the river again attempts to produce its own art in the form of sculpture in the water. The working material may be an old trolley but with the reflection on the water’s surface, I couldn’t help thinking of it as a piece of art in keeping with the “bottle top” or the “graffiti” to be seen by the river bank.

River sculpture

Riverside sculpture

Riverside art

 

River, Railings, Ripples and Reflections

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Moving on with my city walk in Belfast I have returned to the River Lagan. There is no frost here as there was at the start of my walk higher up the river but that doesn’t mean the river is any less attractive or interesting.

The Lagan creates its own art in the reflected patterns of railings distorted by ripples  or the mirror effect on twigs projecting out of the still water.

River Reflections

City Patterns

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Walking around Belfast revealed many fascinating structures in the architecture. The camera can be a very useful tool when it comes to focusing on aspects of buildings that create fascinating patterns when isolated from their surroundings. The patterns are there anyway but it is not always easy to pick them out amongst the complexity of their surroundings. Sometimes, of course, it is a combination of structures seen from a particular angle that does the trick.

Belfast City patterns

City Sounds 2

If viewing this in an email, to see the sound player you will need to visit the blog – please click the post title to view the full post.

Wheeling and Dealing

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Approaching Belfast city centre on this Boxing Day walk in 2011 the architecture becomes abstract when superimposed against the big ferris wheel situated beside City Hall. Seen behind one of the columned towers of the building, the scene takes on a Christmassy or religious appearance – ironic considering the role that religion still plays in Northern Ireland politics. So are the punters wheeling while the politicians are dealing?

This shot can also be seen in black and white on Monochrome Madness MM 2-41 at Leanne Cole Photography.

Ferris Wheel

 

City Colours

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My walk around Belfast started with the River Lagan but then headed towards the city centre. It was Boxing Day and the streets were relatively quiet. The range of architectural design, colours and patterns may be what you might expect in any city, but this is Belfast, the place where I grew up and still love.

This walk was taken a few years ago and I have not been there since. These photos  are therefore important to me and serve my memory very favourably.

Belfast

My Walk this Week 17 – City Walk

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My walk this week moves from a suburban location (see the last two weeks posts) to the inner city location of Belfast in Northern Ireland. The first two images below may not look like the inner city but you don’t have to walk far up the river Lagan to reach this point on its route into Belfast. Perhaps the construction crane in the third image comes closer to proving the city location.

Frozen Footpath

River Lagan Cormorant

Belfast Crane

Natural and Man-Made Thorns

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Bramble thorns and barbed wire – both are effective means of protection!

Barbed wire has been both a feature and a theme in my work as an artist for many years now. The idea to try including barbs within the weave of my tapestries came from my need to represent something of the tension I felt whilst listening to the peace talks in Northern Ireland back in the late 1990s. Having grown up in Belfast during the 60s and 70s, it seemed to me to be the perfect material to represent conflict as my memory is of there being so much of it around at the time.

The first people to see the first tapestries I wove that incorporated barbed wire, did not think of it as representing conflict except in terms of texture – the soft wool of the weft and the hard sharpness of the barbs. They were living in the local rural community of SE Wales and only thought of barbed wire as a material for use in farming.

Metaphor or not, for me the barbs still represent conflict and although that theme in my work has broadened over the years, it is still a fact that the hard, sharp material of spikes, either man-made or natural, are there to protect one thing against another where there is a conflict of interests.

I have included a photo of one of my earlier tapestries from this thematic period – if you would like to see more examples of my work, please visit Design Fibre ICT at www.acmd.co.uk

Bramble Thorns

barbed wire

Tapestry Weaving and barbed wire

Tenses 4 – photograph by David Wibberly

More examples of my tapestry weaving can be seen at www.acmd.co.uk