Death of a Mural

Abstract

This article focuses on what happens when mural paintings in Northern Ireland come to the end of their effective lifespan. It begins from a perspective of mural painting as a socially constructed artefact, which is involved in dynamic interaction with the local environment. But while most work on this subject area has focused on the reasons why paintings are created in the first place and/or on the meanings of their symbolic content, the article analyses what happens when the murals are no longer of any social interest and explores a number of reasons for their transformation, removal and disappearance. It defines a framework of seven categories: retirement, redundancy, recycling, redevelopment, reclamation, remonstration and restoration that can be used to explore how and why mural paintings that have reached the end of their life are removed or replaced.