Commissioned by the Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival and probably to this day the most significant and iconic piece of street art in Belfast on the side of Belfast’s most important arts venue.
The Duel of Belfast is the perfect metaphor for Belfast’s troubled past and irritating present. The scene is one of two men fighting over a carcass of a dead animal. So consumed are they with defeating each other in combat and claiming the pointless prize that they fail to see that the world is decaying around them. It’s a perfect metaphor for Belfast’s difficult history and the wider notion of nationalism, empire and privileged white men fighting over pointless symbols.