‘Waiting for the Number 12′

 March 17, 2022 |
|

The Gerard Dillon Gallery, Cultúrlann, Belfast.

(24th March to 28th of April 2022)

Noel was born and raised in West Belfast and as a child he would have traveled from his home in Andersonstown into town on the number 12 trolley bus. Trolley buses were finally withdrawn from service on the 12th May 1968. For this project he tracked down and worked directly with the actual bus which made the last journey along the Falls Road, passing Broadway Presbyterian Church, now Cultúrlann.

Using film, poetry and photography …

 

“ I wanted to explore why the number 12 bus from Casement Park to Castle Street features so conspicuously in my memory, and to examine how events on and around it capture a transition from a childhood innocence into the realities of late 1960’s Belfast”.

 

For this solo exhibition Noel has developed and extended ideas which were initiated by his involvement in ‘Frontier Work’, the group show he was selected to contribute to at the Regional Cultural Centre in Letterkenny. As in many of his previous exhibitions his own words weave a narrative strand through all his imagery, producing evocative poems and sound pieces as an integral part of the work.