Portumna shorelines in sculpture wonderland

Visitors to Portumna for the recent Shorelines Arts Festival may be forgiven for thinking they had slipped down the rabbit hole into Alice’s Wonderland.

For nearly every which way they turned at some stage during the four-day festival, the skeletal remains of a giant creature boasting gramophones instead of horns appeared.

There it was floating out on the Shannon, up it stood majestically in Portumna Forest Park, popping up in almost every corner of the picturesque riverside town. It was even serenaded by traditional music aficionados Martin Hayes and Denis Cahill’s during their festival concert.

Megaloceros is based on the now extinct Irish elk and is the brainchild of prolific Athenry sculptor Donnacha Cahill.

The Portumna Shorelines Arts Festival appointed him their artist in residence for 2016 and he was funded by the Arts Council to create a work that reflected the arts event and the town.

He developed an idea under the guidance of Noelle Lynskey, Margaret Hickey and Jackie Hogan of the Shorelines committee.

“I took inspiration for the work from visiting Portumna Forest Park. In the park there is a walled garden which was used for tea parties by the gentry in the past. I started to think about bringing back things from the past and what they sounded like, then started to think about what animals would have also inhabited the area,” explained Donnacha

“I decided to recreate the now extinct Irish Elk which is also known as Megaloceros which translates to ‘giant horn’, but instead replaced his head with two oversized gramophone horns which reflected my previous work ‘The Gramophone’ which was recently part of the Galway International Arts festival.

The Elk is based on research from the National History Museum of Ireland. His sculpture is made of steel, weighing quarter of a tonne and standing 2.6 meters tall.

“I placed two speakers in his horn which are naturally amplified the sound making it travel further through the air. I am interested in the idea of moveable sculpture so I wanted the elk to travel around the town from location to location to share sounds from the past with the residents of Portumna.”

“Visitors would hear unusual sounds coming from the woods on their walk before being confronted by the Elk. It also played a visit to 11am Mass on Sunday. After the congregation went inside, I placed it outside the church to greet the parishioners as they left – they were very receptive and it created much conversation. It also received an honourable mention from the altar.”

The sculpture was also floated on the Shannon for Culture Night and was placed outside Martin Hayes and Denis Cahill’s concert – the musicians took time before their set to serenade Megaloceros with their music.

“My idea was to breathe life into the Irish Elk, just as the Shorelines committee were breathing life and energy in to the town of Portumna.”