Brushing Up: A statue of Biddy Mulligan decaying along with the Iveagh Markets

Behind the locked gates at the front of the Iveagh Markets on Francis Street stands the statue of a woman in a sky-blue overcoat.

Her hair is covered by a pale-blue headscarf. Rosary beads are strung around her neck, and clumps of moss grow beneath her clothing, sprouting at her coat collar and sleeves.

The statue depicts Biddy Mulligan, a figure known as the Pride of the Coombe.

She was celebrated in a 1930s ballad penned by Séamus Kavanagh – a song later made famous by the Dubliners – as a “buxom widow” who ran a shop and stall in Dublin 8.

Artist Anthony Freeman O’Brien put up the contemporary earthy statue of her in December 2022, he said last week.

He was stood on Francis Street, looking through the black steel bars, fixed with signs that read “Danger Deep Water,” “Warning Fragile Roof” and “Caution Deep Excavation”.

In January, a section of the roof of the derelict protected structure collapsed.

Mulligan, on display as a decaying figure, echoes the ruin of the iconic Liberties  market – the legal ownership of which is currently the subject of a High Court dispute between publican Martin Keane, Dublin City Council and Arthur Edward Rory Guinness, the Earl of Iveagh.

Beside the statue are a dried bouquet of flowers, mounds of dirt, cigarette butts, empty coffee cups, beer and energy drink cans, and old takeaway boxes.

The sad irony is that the accumulation of litter improves the work, says Freeman O’Brien. “The worse that she gets, the more it exposes what’s going on inside.”

Local Renaissance man

Inside a greenhouse at the community garden across the Liberties on Watling Street,  Freeman O’Brien pulls out another sculpture.

It merges two of his trades: art and beekeeping, the latter of which he does as part of the Digital Hub’s Bee8 project.

It’s a three-foot tall St Gobnait, the patron saint of beekeepers. The stone used to carve the saint was sourced from within the Iveagh Markets, he says.

Freeman O’Brien counts many vocations. Not just a beekeeper and artist, he is also a community gardener, writer and a history guide with In Our Shoes Walking Tours.

He took up these pursuits in the last four years, he says, while walking along Thomas Street. “I had cancer a few years ago, and then I had a breakdown because I was unemployed for a long time.”

“It was when I came out of the breakdown, I found myself able to do things,” he says.

On the way to Francis Street, he takes a scenic detour onto Oliver Bond Street to point to a clump of moss in the outline of a man.

During the first national lockdown due to Covid-19, he took to making works of “moss graffiti” around Dublin 8. “It was inspired by Covid itself,” he says.

Moss is a natural filter, he says. “It cleans air and water, so with an airborne pathogen, that inspired me, and I put things like this everywhere.”

He stuck the moss onto walls around the area using a mixture of eggs, beer, sugar and buttermilk, he says. “I felt like it gave people a little moment in their day, a ‘What the hell is that?’ moment.”

Rack and ruin

The statue of Biddy Mulligan stands within the shadowy entrance of the Iveagh Markets, hiding behind the steel bars and signs notifying locals of the crumbling state of the building.

The idea originated from a visit into the Iveagh Markets, says Freeman O’Brien, peeking in at Biddy Mulligan.

“The frame of the statue had been made by a friend of mine, a Swedish artist, who made the body for another project,” he said.

After the building’s security allowed him into the market once, the image came to him, he says. “I could see her standing in there. I knew straight away, and I designed the statue around that.”

It wasn’t originally going to be Biddy Mulligan, he says. “That came later. What I wanted was to have a trader who physically wore the consequences of what happens in there.”

He points to her right arm, a branch of a buddleia. “The buddleia grows in abandoned buildings,” he says.

In the song, Mulligan had been a trader on Patrick Street.

“By Patrick’s street corner for 35 years/ I stood by my stall that’s no lie/ And while stood there, there was no one would dare/ To say black was the white of me eye,” sings Kavanagh’s ballad.

And as Freeman O’Brien reimagines her story, the next step in her life came when she was approached by the Countess of Iveagh, he says.

“She brought Biddy to the market, where she stayed to protect it after the market changed hands, and physically she takes on everything that happened inside,” he says.

Freeman O’Brien penned lyrics which creates a fictionalised version of Mulligan’s real-life story. The song, titled “Biddy from The Coombe”, was recorded with the folk band Flock of Seagulls.

Freeman O’Brien writes that the Countess of Iveagh brought Mulligan to the market, asking her to come to “a place warm and dry”.

“Now the years moving faster/ my dreams are all smashed up/ the place fall into rack and ruin/ we have a new master whose reign is disaster/ wants yis all out the door soon,” it goes.

Local historian and spokesperson for the Friends of the Iveagh Market, James Madigan, says Freeman O’Brien’s rewriting of the popular song is powerful and poignant.

“Biddy Mulligan, the pride of the Coombe, becomes Biddy Mulligan alone in her tomb,” he says. “It’s prophetic because we’re watching nature taking over the markets.”

This was their market

The statue of Mulligan forms part of a diptych, celebrating the history of traders in the Liberties.

By her side inside the market’s entrance is a smaller, more modest sculpture on a white table.

It shows a man, made from cement. He is hunched as he pulls a wooden cart across a slab of concrete. Like Mulligan, the figure’s box cart is covered in a yellowing clump of moss.

The character is a “tugger”, says Freeman O’Brien. “Tuggers were men who pulled carts around Dublin and cleaned up. It was laborious work.”

This figure depicts Paddy Alldritt who was the last of Dublin’s tuggers, Freeman O’Brien says. “He disappeared around the exact same time as the market, and I haven’t seen a tugger since. That was in the 90s.”

Alldritt died 20 years ago, says Noel Fleming of Noel’s Deli on Meath Street. “He was a wonderful character, and I’ve always wanted to see a plaque up for him, and Anthony’s sculpture is exactly what he looked like.”

Madigan likens Freeman’s depiction of street life in Dublin 8 to that of the English sketch artist, L.S. Lowry, who was notable for having captured Balbriggan in the 1970s.

Freeman O’Brien’s celebration of Mulligan – and Alldritt – embodies the spirit of the market, he says. “At its very best, the Iveagh Market was the place where traders were, for the first time, respected and given this brand new building, instead of being out on the streets.”

When Madigan watches old newsreels of the market’s traders, he sees in them a feeling of pride for this place, and that is present in Freeman O’Brien’s work, he says. “This was their building. It’s why I like his work a lot.”

Note: Our Brushing Up series tells the stories behind pieces of art on display across Dublin, from paintings in pubs to mossy sculptures. So you can pretend you know your art. You can read more of the pieces here.