User:Serial Number 54129/Medieval England

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Gerard "Mó chara" Kelly is a Belfast-based mural artist, known for his political pieces on themes of Irish culture and Irish republicanism.

Early life and career[edit]

Kelly had no professional artistic training; he later commented that, when he started, it was commented that he was "too tough" for what was perceived as being for "soft people".[1] Brought up in a staunchly Republican household, in the early 1980s Kelly began engaging in "militant activism".[1] Says Williams, "in one particularly memorable action, they carved out the letter’s form on a local mountainside, filled the shape with white lime, and then lit the design on fire to create a flaming emblem".[1]

Williams describes Kelly as an "unsupported community artist". Kelly relied on donations of material from the local community to produce his murals, and this would often dictate the nature of the piece, particularly ion his use of colour.[2] Further, the community continues to augment the mural after Kelly has finished. For example, his piece commemorating the Ballymurphy massacre occasionally had personal notes added to it from relatives of those who had been killed; in this way, argues Murray, Kelly's are "living murals".[3]

A major influence on Kelly was the 1981 Hunger Strikes, which took place in the Maze Prison while he was imprisoned there. The hunger strikers were demanding political status and to be treated as prisoners of war rather than criminals; graffiti began to appear supporting their struggle, and this turned into artworks.[4] The scholar Maggie M. Williams argues that "as these works proliferated, they retained their explicitly politicized imagery, depicting the prisoners themselves, the letter H to represent the H-Block cellular prison, and imagery of the IRA’S militant resistance".[4] Kelly described his experience of prison:[1]

Prison was supposed to be a breakers’ yard for republicans...You were allowed to paint hankies of the Pope, the Virgin Mary, Mickey Mouse and things like that. They censored everything. Anything with 'Long Kesh' on it, or 'H Blocks', anything like that was not allowed to go out.[1]

Kelly was placed in solitary confinement for 24-hours a day, and Kelly used art as a form of therapy to maintain mental equilibrium while imprisoned; it was, he later commented, "the only thing [he] had". He began by drawing innocuous images—such as Mickey Mouse—on his letters to the outside.[1] His natural talent, says Williams, was honed with the symbols that surrounded him: a Gaelic-illustrated prayer book, a small bible which contained artwork from the Book of Kells, and a copy of Jim FitzPatriclk's 1978 graphic novel-version of Lebor Gabála Érenn (transl. "The Book of Conquests"). It was around this time that Kelly chose the nickname[note 1]—mó chara lit. transl. my friend—that would stay with him for the rest of his life. Williams suggests that this reflected the personal transformation—an "explosion of pride in his cultural identity"—that Kelly underwent in prison.[1] Although not a literal translation, it is likely that Kelly's interpretation of cara, in this context, was "comrade" rather than "friend", due to its adoption during the middle of political struggle.[6][note 2]

Following the end of the hunger strike, a more relaxed regime was introduced at the Maze, and Kelly was able to receive art supplies from the outside. Kelly began creating watercolours from Fitzpatrick's graphic novel. Kelly later explained his thinking at this time:[1]}}

I got this book called "The Book of Conquests by Jim Fitzpatrick and it just astounded me when I saw it. And I said, "This guy’s thinking the way I think about Irish culture, Irish mythology." So, When I saw this, I decided this was the thing for me to do. Rather than do Mickey Mouse things, I decided to paint Celtic mythology.[1][note 3]

One of Kelly's "spectacular" pieces from this time borrows Jim Fitzpatrick’s image of King Nuada of the Tuatha Dé Danann. Fitzpatrick raised no objections to Kelly's appropriation, although he later told Willimas that while he was "delighted" that Kelly had used his imagery, "the only thing I asked was that [Kelly] not use political slogans on the work". Although Kelly respected Fitzpatrick's request, it forced him to discover other ways of conveying the overtly republican message that he wished to promote. Williams describes Kelly's depiction of Niada as playing "with the scale and public visibility of Fitzpatrick’s original superhero image of the ancient king. Nuada is depicted in profile, soaring in space before an elaborately decorated series Ofconcentric rings." The image is surrounded by the phrase, is é seo nuada, rí tuatha dé danaan (transl. Here is Nuada, King of the Tuatha Dé Danann). Williams notes that there is nothing overtly political about this piece at all: but kelly manages to convey a political message purely through its geographic location of West Belfast, thus managing to "evoke...an ancient, unified and politically independent Ireland".[8] Kelly has been described as attempting to "'re-imagine' and reappropriate space in the process of reidentifying with a sense of Irish cultural identity".[5]

Kelly occasionally faced harassment while he was painting his murals. In March 1988, a recently completed piece focussed on the deaths of three IRA volunteers in Gibralta was vandalised by the army shortly after it was completed. Kelly began repainting it, and later described the environment in which he did so:[9]|group=note}}

British soldiers were patrolling the area at the time I was painting the Gibraltar mural. One of them came up to me and in my face and says [sic] to me, 'What's your name?' I said, What the fuck do you think my name is? Because I mean they know who I am. It is in their briefing reports before they come out on the street. They see photographs of who is in the area. After that, another British soldier grabbed me by the throat and started to trail me down the entry. And the other Brits were yelling, 'Shoot him, shoot the fucker' and the soldier cocked his rifle and put it to my head. I said to myself, Mo chara this is your last day and just at that moment women [from the community] came around and started screaming and I just said, thank god, thank god. And my mate...came over to sort of cool the situation down, but they were going to kill me that day.[9]

Kelly sometimes rejects placing his murals—which can take months to construct—where they would receive greater visibility for the sake of addressing a specific audience. An example of this is in his Cúchulainn mural in North Belfast; it is hidden down an alleyway where few would see it, but it is on a wall opposite a youth club. The scholar Lesley Murray suggests that this is a deliberate ploy to remind the youthful clientele of the club of their heritage.[5] Occasionally the murals were vandalised; Kelly would repair them each time.[9][note 4]

Kelly has travelled internationally advising people who wish to construct their own murals.[5]

Selected works[edit]

Image Location Description Created Reference
Springhill Avenue, Belfast Dominated by a Celtic cross, the green hills represent County Tyrone and the water is that of Lough Neagh with a sunset in the background. The people shown are not the dead IRA men, but a colour party. The dead are named in the box. The combination of the ancient symbol of the cross in a modern setting, says Williams, links the dead men "with the long cultural history of the country".[10] Chríost has called the Loch gCál mural "pivotal",[11] while the Irish academic Bill Rolston wrote "Republican areas had never seen a mural like it. The detail, the colour and the confidence were exceptional."[12] Some of those who later died at Loughgal had been imprisoned alongside Kelly in the Maze in the early 1980s.[11] The mural took two months to complete.[13] 1987 [14]
Celtic interlaced border (the main panel, about the Gibralta three, is by Danny Devenny) 1998 [15]
Ballymurphy Rd, Belfast Paddy Teer 2000

Notes[edit]

  1. ^ Also called a pen name.[5]
  2. ^ It is an example, says the linguist Diarmait Mac Giolla Chríost, of the jailtacht phenomenon, whereby republicans learned Irish in prison. The word is a portmanteau pun on Gaeltacht, or Irish-speaking area.[7] Chríost also suggests that the mó chara was a deliberate nod towards Bobby Sands, the first of the h1981 hunger strikers to die, who used the term frequently in his prison diary.[6]
  3. ^ Williams notes the similarities between the two artists; both, she says, "celebrate a robust and daring version of Irishness that highlights bravery and machismo in the Celtic tradition".[1]
  4. ^ Loch gCál, for example, was paint-bombed eight times, between them, by members of the British army and RUC according to Kelly.[9]

References[edit]

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Williams 2012, p. 122.
  2. ^ Williams 2012, p. 133.
  3. ^ Murray 2015, pp. 52–53.
  4. ^ a b Williams 2012, p. 129.
  5. ^ a b c d Murray 2015, p. 51.
  6. ^ a b Chríost 2012, p. 182.
  7. ^ Chríost 2007, p. 324.
  8. ^ Williams 2012, p. 130.
  9. ^ a b c d Saleeby-Mulligan 2006, p. 252.
  10. ^ Williams 2012, p. 131.
  11. ^ a b Chríost 2012, p. 179.
  12. ^ Rolston 1992, p. vi.
  13. ^ Saleeby-Mulligan 2006, p. 251.
  14. ^ Williams 2012, pp. 130–131.
  15. ^ Kelly 1998.

Bibliography[edit]

  • Chríost, D. (2007). "The Origins of 'the Jailtacht'". Proceedings of the Harvard Celtic Colloquium. 27: 317–336.
  • Chríost, D. (2012). Jailtacht: The Irish Language, Symbolic Power and Political Violence in Northern Ireland, 1972-2008. Cardiff: University of Wales Press. ISBN 978-1-78316-511-7.
  • Murray, L. (2015). "Placing Murals in Belfast: Community, Negotiation and Change". In Cartiere, C.; Zebracki, M. (eds.). The Everyday Practice of Public Art: Art, Space, and Social Inclusion. London: Routledge. p. 4562. ISBN 978-1-31757-203-9.
  • Saleeby-Mulligan, D. (2006). Painting the Irish Conflict: The Belfast Murals of Gerard Mo chara Kelly (PhD thesis). City University of New York.
  • Williams, M. M. (2012). Icons of Irishness from the Middle Ages to the Modern World. London: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-0-230-10320-7.
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