Holy cow! It’s art in the mart

The concrete floor and walls of Athenry Mart (or m Art)have been scrubbed clean after the previous day’s cattle sale.

There isn’t a smidgen of cow dung to be seen. But the smell isn’t so easy to dispense with – it’s everywhere and it’s pervasive.

Walking through the covered yard of a mart on a day when there’s no sale is a strange experience. The endless pens lie empty and silent and there are no animals bellowing, no cattle lorries pulling up, and no farmers doing business.

The only people walking through the space today, heading into Ring Number Two are a group of artists who have taken this most rural landmark as the basis of a new exhibition, which will be opened next Friday, August 14.

Seven artists all living locally and working in a range of media, from photography to painting to sculpture, developed this project with the aim of capturing the social, cultural and economic life of their own area, which is largely based on farming.

Before settling on the mart, they had explored the idea of using the local castle and abbey.

“But those belong to history, the mart belongs to now,” explains sculptor Donnacha Cahill, the only man in the mArtist group. The other members of mArtist collective are Aideen Monaghan, Elaine Quinlan, Kathy Ross, Maria Hitchcox Sallyann Beirne and Tricia Fahy. Between them, they have created a wonderfully eclectic exhibition – that one space could have evoked so many different responses is a tribute to their creativity.

Kathy Ross has zoned in on the farmers and their animals; for Aideen it was their vehicles, while the space itself was the inspiration for other member of the mArtist collective.

Aideen and Donnacha are brother and sister and both are originally from Athenry. Kathy, Sallyann and Elaine are also from Galway, while Maria moved here from Dublin and Tricia – who was absent the day we met – is from Athenry.

While most of the group are originally from Galway, not all are from a rural background and, so when they first came here in April to research the project, it was a new experience for several of them.

Marts are largely a male-dominated places, where cattle, sheep and – in the case of Athenry – poultry are traded for cold, hard cash.

For the six female artists it was a ‘very masculine place’ and a couple felt intimidated when they first came here. Their discomfort is understandable. There’s the noise, the smells, the speed at which the auctioneer operates – if you aren’t interested in buying, selling or assessing livestock, you have very little business at a mart.

“There is a Wall Street quality to a mart. It’s quite a ruthless place,” observes Sallyann Beirne as she explains that the environment of the place is really what intrigues her.

“There’s a sinister quality to it when it’s empty; the dampness, the dirt, the colours . . . the feeling of the lines and the shapes and forms – a feeling of never being able to get out with all these annexes into hidden spaces.”

For more on the individual artists and the exhibition please see this week’s Tribune here