Saturday 15 May 2010

2010:365:135 Waterfall of Souvenirs

Another visit that had to be made to the centre of town gave the opportunity to take pictures of this ceramic installation at the Great Northern Mall.  It is a five metre high avalanche of ceramic memorabilia from all over Northern Ireland created by John Kindness in 1989.  
It connects all the places to which Ulsterbus goes and in the details there are both painted illustrations and holiday souvenirs.  Favourite foods (The Ulster Fry) lies alongside popular drinks (Bushmills Whiskey) and all flow down among the pigs, sheep and leprechauns.   The public responded with enthusiasm when an invitation was issued for them to send in items for use in the monument.  Some of these are included along with specially fired pieces and the whole thing is an interesting jumble of ideas.
Life is that sort of mixture of memories all flowing together into the future. There was a problem with uploading the rest of the photographs.... they'll appear on http://snapshotsofalife.shutterfly.com/pictures/919 as soon as I can get them to work!

All good gifts around us
are sent from heaven above;
then thank the Lord, O thank the Lord,
for all his love.

Church Hymnal number 47
"We plough the fields" by Matthias Claudius (1740-1815) 

2 comments:

Loey said...

What a great jumble of ideas and art that turned out well.
I didn't realize the size of it until I read your blog!
Would be interesting to see it in person.
(By the way Elizabeth, you blog is now coming up differently.
There are no ads and the comment box takes the whole screen.
Before the comment box used to come up in the left hand corner as a small box and you could still see your blog, but now your blog disappears by the full screen comment box. Just thought to let you know).

Rev Elizabeth said...

I'm still getting the little box in the left corner... no idea why your box takes up the screen ... I don't get ads.... odd... nothing has been changed this end.... maybe it will revert??
Thanks for all your comments. I love looking at it... but the women are perhaps more challenging.... this installation is "happy memories" and has "feel good" factor. The women make you think!
Hope whatever has changed sorts itself out....