Artist Talk: Bridget O'Gorman

Pálás Cinema, 15 Merchants Rd Lower
Monday 20 November 2023
11am - 1pm

TULCA’s Artist Talks Series in partnership with ATU presents the final talk of this year’s edition of TULCA Festival of Visual Arts by artist Bridget O’Gorman. This year’s talks series is kindly hosted by Pálás Cinema.

Bridget O’Gorman
Bridget O’Gorman is a visual artist and writer. Using text, live event, video and sculptural installation, her work explores the body as material, considering otherness, the speculative and expanded corporeal experience. Bridget recently reached an impasse in the way that she works due to the deterioration of a permanent spinal injury known as Cauda Equina Syndrome.

Support | Work, 2023
A sculptural installation, forming an ecosystem of balance and precariousness reflecting on what it means to support and be supported and ultimately how we affect one another. The sculptures are large-scale ‘mobiles’: reflecting upon ideas of support and equilibrium, and created using found and fabricated media, using pulleys, parts from mobility aids, and hoists. The sculptures are informed by support and access, but will also be produced through access, made with a support worker.

A commission supported by Arts & Disability Ireland’s Connect+ Award 2023.

TULCA Festival of Visual Arts
honey, milk and salt in a seashell before sunrise
Curated by Iarlaith Ní Fheorais
3 - 19 November 2023
Galway, Ireland

Access: Step free venue. Accessible toilet facilities located at -2 level. Each screen has wheelchair accessible seats, at the back room of each screen. A complimentary carer seat is provided with these seats. Three accessible parking spots on Saint Augustine Street opposite the TULCA Gallery, a 4-minute walk from the venue. The talk will be live captioned.

Video edit: Jonathan Sammon

Helium Arts Galway Youth Showcase

Porter Shed 1, Bowling Green
Saturday 18 November 2023
2.30pm - 4.30pm

Helium Arts is pleased to present an art showcase by young people with lifelong health conditions that spotlights issues with accessing cultural and public spaces in Galway.

Online Exhibition: 13 November - 1 December 2023, on Helium Arts website and social media.

An accompanying in-person ‘Sharing Day’ for family and friends is taking place at Porter Shed 1, Galway on Saturday, 18 November, 2.30 - 4.30pm.

The Helium Arts Youth Showcase will display artworks by teenagers with lifelong health conditions from Galway and across the region, who have been participating in a programme of Saturday meet ups and art camps, with artist Niamh Gibbons.  Expect to see thought-provoking pieces, including bunting, badges and stamps, among the works on display.

Presented in association with TULCA Festival of Visual Arts with funding support from Galway City Arts Office, Helium Arts, Creative Ireland, Dept of Health, HSE, Arts Council, Dept Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, Community Foundation.

TULCA Festival of Visual Arts
honey, milk and salt in a seashell before sunrise
Curated by Iarlaith Ní Fheorais
3 - 19 November 2023
Galway, Ireland

Access: Step-free venue, accessible toilet facilities, accessible parking at Market St Car Park in front of Porter Shed 1.

Gallery Workshop: Discussion and Reflection

University Gallery, The Quadrangle, University of Galway
Saturday 18th November 2023
12:30pm - 13:30pm

An hour-long session of guided discussion and a reflective exercise will be hosted in the University Gallery. Along with a discussion on the themes of TULCA 2023, we will be delving further into contemplating some works selected by the participants. The background of the artist, artwork, concept and the curatorial decision for the work being selected would be shared, along with the responses that each may give to this work. These sessions will be hosted by TULCA Education Coordinator Aoife Natsumi Frehan, and Kate McSharry, Education Officer.

About the Artist and Work
Jenny Brady is an artist filmmaker based in Dublin, exploring ideas around speech, translation and communication. Her films have been presented with LUX, The New York Film Festival, This Long Century, Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival, MUBI, International Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen, McEvoy Foundation for the Arts, TENT Rotterdam, EMAF, Videonale, Camden International Film Festival, London Film Festival, Images Festival, November Film Festival, the Irish Film Institute, EVA International, The Irish Museum of Modern Art, The Whitechapel gallery and Tate Liverpool. Her works are distributed by LUX.

Music for Solo Performer, 2022
Part-homage, part-sequel, Music for Solo Performer is a filmic reimagining of composer Alvin Lucier’s work for amplified brainwaves, drawing connections between the 1969 composition, speech synthesis and the passing of the filmmaker’s mother. Brady’s disparate assemblage of found sound and image – including EEG analysis, a Jerry Lewis Telethon and the first pizza ordered via synthesised voice – combines to form a densely concentrated transmission of cinematic pleasure, meditating on the relationship between illness and technology with pathos and care.

TULCA Festival of Visual Arts
honey, milk and salt in a seashell before sunrise
Curated by Iarlaith Ní Fheorais
3 - 19 November 2023
Galway, Ireland

Access: University Gallery is a basement venue accessed by three steps to reach the ground floor, followed by a flight of stairs or a stair lift to the basement. There is accessible parking located on campus in front of the Quadrangle Building. The nearest accessible bathroom is located at O'Donoghue Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance, a 4 minute walk across the green. The film time has captioned and audio described versions, played on loop. Seating is provided.

Image: Ros Kavanagh

Abandoned Goods Film Screening with talk by Prof. Clair Wills | Ballinasloe Library

Ballinasloe Library, Society St, Ballinasloe
Friday 17 November 2023
2.30pm - 4.30pm

J.J. Beegan was an artist and sculptor who made drawings repeatedly naming himself, his profession and Ballinasloe, as a long stay patient at Netherne Mental Health Hospital, in East Surrey, England, where he made drawings recalling home.

Screened in Ballinasloe for the first time, Abandoned Goods is a short film that explores the many artists making work in Netherne, including artist and sculptor J.J. Beegan, through archival and 35mm footage. Following the screening there will be a talk by Professor Clair Wills, who will discuss her process of searching for Beegan, and crucially about what happens when we can’t trace people, what then does the evidence amount to.

Abandoned Goods, 2014
Length: 37 mins

Abandoned Goods screened as part of TULCA Festival of Visual Arts curated by Iarlaith Ní Fheorais. An essay film exploring the journey of one of Britain’s major collections of 'asylum art' containing about 5,500 objects (paintings, drawings, ceramics, sculptures and works on stone, flint and bone) created between 1946 and 1981, by about 140 people compelled to live in the Netherne psychiatric hospital in South London. 

Abandoned Goods was awarded the Golden Pardino for the Best International Short Film in the Leopards of Tomorrow Competition at Locarno Film Festival. To date it has also screened at the Hamptons, London BFI Film Festival, Sundance, True/False, Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, Oberhausen, Festival Internacional de Cine De Huesca, Janela Internacional de Cinema Festival, Bucharest Experimental Film Festival, First Fortnight Film Festival, DocAviv, San Francisco Documentary Film Festival and Busan International Short Film Festival.

Edward Lawrenson is a Scottish filmmaker and writer based in London. His films have played at a number of festivals, including Sundance, BFI London Film Festival, Cinéma du réel, True/False, Open City; and cinemas, including the Museum of the Moving Image in New York and London’s ICA. 

Pia Borg is a Maltese/Australian filmmaker. Her non-fiction films that chronicle historical events and psychological phenomena have received numerous prizes, including the Golden Leopard at Locarno Festival for Abandoned Goods (2014) which she co-directed with Ed Lawrenson.

Abandoned Goods was made with the help of Dr David O'Flynn and the Adamson Collection Trust and the support of the Wellcome Trust and the Maudsley Charity.

TULCA Festival of Visual Arts
honey, milk and salt in a seashell before sunrise
Curated by Iarlaith Ní Fheorais
3 - 19 November 2023
Galway, Ireland

Access: A step-free venue, assessed via a lift. Accessible toilet facilities available, and two accessible parking spaces at the back of the library. The film is captioned. Seating is provided.

Video edit: Jonathan Sammon

Artist Talk: Sarah Browne | TULCA Gallery

TULCA Gallery, Hynes Building, St Augustine St
Monday 13 November 2023
11am - 1pm

TULCA’s Artist Talks Series in partnership with ATU presents the third talk of this year’s edition of TULCA Festival of Visual Arts by artist Sarah Browne.

Sarah Browne
Sarah Browne is an artist concerned with spoken and unspoken, bodily experiences of knowledge, labour and justice. Her practice involves sculpture, film, performance and public projects, and frequent interdisciplinary collaboration.

Echo’s Bones, 2022
A collaborative film-making project made with autistic young people in North County Dublin. The project borrows its title from an unpublished story by Samuel Beckett set in that landscape of Fingal, where now an old asylum building meets the coastline. Beckett’s plays are populated with people who might move with difficulty, mutter over each other, talk into the dark or not speak at all. The project questions why such neurodivergent or disabled styles of communication may be treated poorly in everyday situations, but valued as artistically exciting in others. It is a way of asking what a neurodivergent cinema, art, and world could be like.

TULCA Festival of Visual Arts
honey, milk and salt in a seashell before sunrise
Curated by Iarlaith Ní Fheorais
3 - 19 November 2023
Galway, Ireland

Access: A step-free venue, with accessible toilet facilities. There are three accessible parking spots on Saint Augustine Street opposite the TULCA Gallery. The talk will be live captioned.

Image: Sarah Browne, Echo’s Bones, 2022. 4K video with open captions (English language), 22:18 minutes. Film still. Cinematographer Cathy Dunne.

Video edit: Jonathan Sammon

Nat Raha: epistolary (on carceral islands)

Nuns Island Theatre, Galway
Sunday 12 November 2023
2pm - 3pm

A performance addressing the history and development of island prisons across the globe through the colonial project of the British Empire. The work travels from Bass Rock in the Firth of Forth, to outposts of ‘empyre’ such as Spike Island, Ireland, and to the Andaman Islands in the Bay of Bengal. The performance will take the form of a sonically expansive, trans-historical poem-letter addressed to ancestors incarcerated for anti-colonial revolt. Raha considers what the rise and fall of these carceral islands can teach us about contemporary abolitionist struggles, from a transfeminist perspective. 

Dr Nat Raha is a poet and activist-scholar, and Lecturer in Fine Art Critical Studies at the Glasgow School of Art. Her work is of an experimental queer lyric, attending to the everyday of marginalised lives, histories of struggle and resistance to racial capitalism, of humans and the more-than-human. She works through de/re/materialising sound, form and syntax, on the page and in performance. With Mijke van der Drift, Nat co-edits Radical Transfeminism zine, and is currently co-authoring a book Trans Femme Futures: An Abolitionist Ethics for Transfeminist Worlds (forthcoming, 2024).

Co-commissioned by TULCA and Edinburgh Arts Festival 2023.

TULCA Festival of Visual Arts
honey, milk and salt in a seashell before sunrise
Curated by Iarlaith Ní Fheorais
3 - 19 November 2023
Galway, Ireland

Access: A step free venue. A single accessible parking space across the road from Nuns Island Theatre. Accessible toilet facilities available. The performance will be live captioned.

Image: Nat Raha, Bass Rock, courtesy of the artist.

Gallery Workshop: Sit within the Faery Fort

Outset Gallery, The Cornstore, Middle St
Saturday 11 November 2023
2.15pm - 3.30pm

An immersive workshop will be held within the Faery Fort by Bog Cottage in Outset Gallery by Aoife Natsumi Frehan, TULCA Education Coordinator, and Kate McSharry, Education Officer. This will be a meditative workshop. Participants would be invited to engage their senses, giving time to notice the bodily and mindful responses to this tactile installation work. Reflecting on what we are drawn towards without focusing solely on what our eyes perceive. There will be time allocated towards exploration documented as drawing (in its broad sense) with materials such as thin, smooth thread, thick bristly wool and fuzzy chunks of felt to fill a space and reflect on our inner thoughts. 

About the Artists and work:
Bog Cottage is an artist collective originally conceived as a formalised response to art making in the West of Ireland. Born from a yearning for queer community and spaces, Bog Cottage first started as friends hanging out making clay, friends doing DIY and opening a queer cafe. Bog Cottage is a response to the question of where do we go for a drink? Where do we go to make out and dance? Where do the queers go? Since then Bog Cot has transformed into an art making tool; a platform for fostering a queer network of artists who want to share skills, knowledge and resources.

The Faery Fort is a place of respite, an otherworldly space to enter into, and be enveloped by its softness and protection. Walls of patchworked curtain maze around the room, hiding what's beyond them. Portals to another space are at the end of your fingertips. Through these familiar walls rugs snake along the floor, tempting your touch. Follow the path till you come to rest, an encircling seat inviting you stop, sit, touch, listen, look - you belong here. This space is for you, in whatever way you need to take it. The faery fortress is a space to meet, to sit, a reprieve from life outside the curtains. A sacred place, a healing space.

The Faery Fort is a new installation by Bog Cottage, specially commissioned for TULCA 2023.

TULCA Festival of Visual Arts
honey, milk and salt in a seashell before sunrise
Curated by Iarlaith Ní Fheorais
3 - 19 November 2023
Galway, Ireland

Access: Gallery Workshop: Bog Cottage will be held in the Outset Gallery, which is wheelchair accessible from the Cornstore entrance. No accessible toilet.

Image: Soft Day Media

Curator's Tour: Iarlaith Ní Fheorais

TULCA Gallery, Hynes Building, St Augustine St
Saturday 11 November 2023
1pm - 2pm

Join Iarlaith Ní Fheorais for a walk around the TULCA Gallery to hear about the development of the TULCA 2023 programme.

Curator: Iarlaith Ní Fheorais
Iarlaith Ní Fheorais is a curator and writer based between the UK and Ireland. She is an Independent Producer with field:arts, working closely with artists Bridget O’Gorman and Ebun Sodipo. Recently she has curated Speech Sounds as Curator-in-Residence at VISUAL Carlow as part of Carlow Arts Festival and collaborated with Emma Wolf-Haugh on a new film commission for Ulysses 2.2. In previous roles she worked at Tate Modern and Britain as Assistant Curator of Young People’s Programmes and was the co-director of Basic Space from 2016-18.

As a writer she has written on the work of Jesse Darling, Manuel Solano and Lorenza Böttner for Frieze, Burlington Contemporary, Viscose Journal and has an art and access column with Visual Arts News Sheet. She regularly contributes towards public programmes and lectures including at Somerset House, Arts and Disability Ireland and Goldsmiths University.

Committed to improving access in the arts, she is currently developing an Arts Council England funded access toolkit for curators and producers. She is a graduate of the National College of Art and Design and is currently studying at the Dutch Art Institute.

TULCA Festival of Visual Arts
honey, milk and salt in a seashell before sunrise
Curated by Iarlaith Ní Fheorais
3 - 19 November 2023
Galway, Ireland

Access: A step-free venue, with accessible toilet facilities. There are three accessible parking spots on Saint Augustine Street opposite the TULCA Gallery.

Image: Ros Kavanagh

Anna Roberts-Gevalt | Flirt FM

Flirt FM, University of Galway
Friday 10 November 2023
6pm - 8pm

Tune into Flirt FM with artist and musician Anna Roberts-Gevalt for a special two hours of live music, chat and songs by sick artists. 

Anna Roberts-Gevalt is a restless artist, making work with composition, traditional music, sculpture, and community organising around disability justice in Lenapehoking/Brooklyn. Their longtime folk duo Anna & Elizabeth was heralded as “a radical expansion of what folk songs are supposed to do” by The New Yorker. They performed at Carnegie Hall, the Newport Folk Festival, the Hirshhorn Museum, Big Ears Festival (where she was guest curator of traditional music), and NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert.

TULCA Festival of Visual Arts
honey, milk and salt in a seashell before sunrise
Curated by Iarlaith Ní Fheorais
3 - 19 November 2023
Galway, Ireland

Image: Jonathan Sammon
Video edit: Jonathan Sammon
Audio recording: Flirt FM

Gallery Workshop: Unwind with Art

TULCA Gallery, Hynes Building, St Augustine St
Friday 10 November 2023
5-6pm

An hour-long session of guided discussion and a reflective exercise will be hosted in the TULCA Gallery. Along with a discussion on the themes of TULCA 2023, we will be delving further into contemplating some works selected by the participants. The background of the artist, artwork, concept and the curatorial decision for the work being selected would be shared, along with the responses that each may give to this work. These sessions will be hosted by TULCA Education Coordinator Aoife Natsumi Frehan, and Kate McSharry, Education Officer.

Capacity: 25 participants

TULCA Festival of Visual Arts
honey, milk and salt in a seashell before sunrise
Curated by Iarlaith Ní Fheorais
3 - 19 November 2023
Galway, Ireland

Access: The workshop will be held in the TULCA Gallery. TULCA Gallery is a step-free venue. Some works seen in the venue are closed captioned and audio described, played on loop. There is seating provided. TULCA Gallery | accessible toilet facilities

Image: Soft Day Media

The Birthday Party | Áine O'Hara

O’Donoghue Centre, University of Galway
Thursday 9 November 2023
6.30pm - 8.30pm

The Birthday Party is a celebration and memorial for the sick disabled D/deaf, chronically ill, neurodiverse people of rural Ireland. Both for those of us living now and those that we have lost to institutionalisation, the medical industrial complex, violence at the hands of the church and violence put upon us by those closest to us.

As the pandemic continues, our communities are increasingly isolated from one another, especially in rural areas. We deserve safe access to joy, community and pleasure, we deserve spaces to dance and celebrate one another.

Dress to impress and join us for a party, led by Áine O'Hara. This is a space for us to recontextualise what it means to be disabled in rural Ireland and to celebrate ourselves and those who came before us and dream of a better future. 

As part of The Birthday Party we want to send you a small gift in the post. Sign up here to receive a personalised invite in the post, this is a small gift for you, whether or not you can make it in person!

This event is supported by Galway City Council, through the Creative Ireland Programme, Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media.

TULCA Festival of Visual Arts
honey, milk and salt in a seashell before sunrise
Curated by Iarlaith Ní Fheorais
3 - 19 November 2023
Galway, Ireland

Access: High quality masks required (and provided), socially distanced event with HEPA filter. Step-free venue. Accessible toilet facilities. Accessible parking is located on campus in front of the Quadrangle Building 4 minutes walk from the venue. There will be seating and cushions. Please do not wear any strong scents (perfume etc.) This event will have live captions.

Image: Áine O’Hara, Birthday Party, 2023. Image courtesy of artist.

Artist Talk: Rouzbeh Shadpey | Pálás

Pálás Cinema, 15 Merchants Rd Lower
Monday 6 November 2023
11am - 1pm

TULCA’s Artist Talks Series in partnership with ATU presents the second talk of this year’s edition of TULCA Festival of Visual Arts by artist Rouzbeh Shadpey. This year’s talks series is kindly hosted by Pálás Cinema.

Rouzbeh Shadpey
Rouzbeh Shadpey is an artist, writer, and musician with a doctorate in medicine and indefatigable fatigue. His musical practice exists under the moniker GOLPESAR. He is based between Tiohtià:ke / Mooniyang / Montreal and Berlin.

Forgetting Is The Sun, 2023
A video-essay that seeks to restore dignity to the act of forgetting. The video-essay juxtaposes footage from the artist's grandmother—who remains silent in the face of a medical memory test being administered to her by an acousmatic narrator—with borrowed footage from two essay films which challenge state sanctioned regimes of remembering: the Iranian poet and filmmaker Forough Farrokhzad’s The House is Black (1962), and the Moroccan poet, filmmaker, and writer Ahmed Bouanani’s Mémoire 14 (1967). Weaving together the falsely dichotomized registers of biological memory and collective history, Forgetting is the Sun recontextualizes Farrokhzad and Bouanani’s defiance of state sanctioned remembrance through the lens of individual forgetting—and its resistance to medical capture.

TULCA Festival of Visual Arts
honey, milk and salt in a seashell before sunrise
Curated by Iarlaith Ní Fheorais
3 - 19 November 2023
Galway, Ireland

Access: Step free venue. Accessible toilet facilities located at -2 level. Each screen has wheelchair accessible seats, at the back room of each screen. A complimentary carer seat is provided with these seats. Three accessible parking spots on Saint Augustine Street opposite the TULCA Gallery, a 4-minute walk from the venue. The talk will be live captioned.

Video edit: Jonathan Sammon

Film Premiere: Symptom Recital: Music for Wild Angels | Leila Hekmat

Pálás Cinema, 15 Merchants Rd Lower
Saturday 4 November 2023
2.30pm - 4pm

TULCA Festival of Visual Arts is pleased to present the film premiere of Symptom Recital: Music for Wild Angels by Leila Hekmat as part of the TULCA 2023 programme honey, milk and salt in a seashell before sunrise curated by Iarlaith Ní Fheorais.

Symptom Recital: Music for Wild Angels is a film of a live performance which took place as part of the exhibition Female Remedy at the Haus am Waldsee in 2023. The museum was transformed into an infirmary for women complete with beds, operating theatre, a chapel and other various rooms for treatment. The story is about a collective of women both familiar and unique to this story and this setting. The setting and spiritual locus for these women is Hospital Hekmat. This is a facility for an illness which needs no cure. The purpose of this infirmary is to fortify existing insolence and foster growth through comic relief and buffoonery. The story is told by the hospital’s head nurse and Jewish general surgeon Krankensister Rene and other nurses and patients. Taking the form of a variety show consisting of satirical monologues with musical interludes weaving the stories of the trials and tribulations of the irreverent staff and patients. The plays’ text and lyrics are crafted from personal experiences, collected dialogue from old television shows, poetry, psychology texts, films and stand-up comedy.

Leila Hekmat
Leila Hekmat (b. 1981, Los Angeles, USA) lives and works in Berlin as a visual artist and director. Her artistic practice heavily involves theatrical installation and stagings which act as mis en scene for a narrative that she explores through a performance and its afterlife. She uses music and satire to question the societal structures and norms we commonly accept regarding gender and sexuality and conjures atypical scenarios that challenge the very notion of normalcy and happiness. Everyday traumas are staged via eccentric, broken spirits as ridiculous, camp, and fantastical dramas. Courtesy the artist and Galerie Isabella Bortolozzi, Berlin.

Writing, Direction, Costumes, Set: Leila Hekmat
Music: Roman Ole, Roman Lemberg
Starring: Roman Ole, Magdalena Mitterhofer, Clara Dessau, Cassie Augusta Jørgensen, Shade Theret, Roman Lemberg
Editing: Manu Aguilar
Produced by Galerie Isabella Bortolozzi & Haus am Waldsee

Film details:
Leila Hekmat
Symptom Recital: Music for Wild Angels, 2023
Film, single channel 4K video
Ca. 86 min
Ed 2/3 + 2AP
Copyright Galerie Isabella Bortolozzi

TULCA Festival of Visual Arts
honey, milk and salt in a seashell before sunrise
Curated by Iarlaith Ní Fheorais
3 - 19 November 2023
Galway, Ireland

Access: Step free venue. Accessible toilet facilities located at -2 level. Each screen has wheelchair accessible seats, at the back room of each screen. A complimentary carer seat is provided with these seats. Three accessible parking spots on Saint Augustine Street opposite the TULCA Gallery, a 4-minute walk from the venue. There is a Loop system in every screen. The film is captioned.

Image: Still from Leila Hekmat, Symptom Recital: Music for Wild Angels, 2023. Courtesy the artist and Galerie Isabella Bortolozzi, Berlin

Artist Talk: Philipp Gufler

TULCA Gallery, Hynes Building, St Augustine St
Saturday 4 November 2023
12.30pm

Join Philipp Gufler for an informal artist talk in the TULCA Gallery to hear about the development of the exhibition on display for TULCA 2023.

Philipp Gufler explores matters of queer imagery, questioning the Western historiography, in which heterosexuality and a binary gender system define the social norm. In his artistic practice he uses various media, including silkscreen-printing on fabrics and mirrors, artist books, performances, and video installations. Since 2013 he has been an active member of the Forum Queeres Archiv München. 

A series of quilts from an ongoing series of silkscreen prints that references artists, scholars and places of queer life that have found little or no place in written accounts and the historical canon. This selection includes artist Lorenza Böttner, singer Lana Kaiser, judge Daniel Paul Schreber and physician Charlotte Woolf.

TULCA Festival of Visual Arts
honey, milk and salt in a seashell before sunrise
Curated by Iarlaith Ní Fheorais
3 - 19 November 2023
Galway, Ireland

Access: A step-free venue, with accessible toilet facilities. There are three accessible parking spots on Saint Augustine Street opposite the TULCA Gallery. The talk will be live captioned.

Image: Philipp Gufler, Quilt #31 (Lorenza Böttner), 2021. Silk screen print on fabric, zipper, 95x180cm. Courtesy BQ, Berlin, and the artist. Photo: Gert Jan van Rooji, Amsterdam.

Video: Jonathan Sammon

Invitation: Official Launch of TULCA Festival of Visual Arts 2023

TULCA Gallery, Hynes Building, St Augustine St
Friday 3 November 2023
6pm - 9pm

TULCA Festival of Visual Arts warmly invites you and your friends to the official launch of honey, milk and salt in a seashell before sunrise curated by Iarlaith Ní Fheorais.

Please join us from 6pm for a reception marking the opening of this years festival at the TULCA Gallery at MetLife, Hynes Building, Saint Augustine St, Galway.

Official Launch | 6pm - 9pm
TULCA Gallery, Saint Augustine St

Afterparty with invited DJ’s | 9pm - 11.30pm
Galway City Distillery, 1-3 Merchants Rd

TULCA Festival of Visual Arts
honey, milk and salt in a seashell before sunrise
Curated by Iarlaith Ní Fheorais
3 - 19 November 2023
Galway, Ireland

Access: A step-free venue, with accessible toilet facilities. There are three accessible parking spots on Saint Augustine Street opposite the TULCA Gallery. 

Video edit: Jonathan Sammon

Masked Launch

TULCA Gallery, Hynes Building, St Augustine St
Friday 3 November 2023
1pm - 3pm

TULCA is delighted to host a masked launch, which will be fully masked with HEPA filter operating. Ensure to book your free place as this is a limited capacity event. 

Masks will be available at the front gallery desk. 

TULCA Festival of Visual Arts
honey, milk and salt in a seashell before sunrise
Curated by Iarlaith Ní Fheorais
3 - 19 November 2023
Galway, Ireland

Access: A step-free venue, with accessible toilet facilities. There are three accessible parking spots on Saint Augustine Street opposite the TULCA Gallery. 

Curator's Talk and Publication Launch: Iarlaith Ní Fheorais
Introduced by Lucy Elvis

Pálás Cinema, 15 Merchants Rd Lower
Friday 27 October 2023
4pm - 6pm

TULCA’s Artist Talks Series continues for this year’s edition of TULCA Festival of Visual Arts: honey, milk and salt in a seashell before sunrise curated by Iarlaith Ní Fheorais. Gain an insight into the curation of TULCA Festival of Visual Arts: honey, milk and salt in a seashell before sunrise. Curator Iarlaith Ní Fheorais will provide an overview of the festival theme and the curatorial principles that have guided her programme of unique artworks and events.

Curator Biography
Iarlaith Ní Fheorais Is a curator and writer, currently the curator of the 21st edition of TULCA Festival of Visual Arts. As a writer she has written for Frieze, Burlington Contemporary, Viscose Journal, Girls Like Us, and has an art and access column with Visual Arts News Sheet. She regularly contributes towards public programmes and lectures including at Somerset House, KW Institute, Konstfack University and Arts and Disability Ireland. Committed to anti-ableism in the arts, she published a free online access toolkit for artworkers in 2023.

TULCA Festival of Visual Arts
honey, milk and salt in a seashell before sunrise
Curated by Iarlaith Ní Fheorais
3 - 19 November 2023
Galway, Ireland

Access: Pálás Cinema  is a step free venue. There are accessible toilet facilities located at -2 level. Each Screen has wheelchair accessible seats, at the back room of each screen. A complimentary carer seat is provided with these seats. There are three accessible parking spots located on Saint Augustine Street opposite the TULCA Gallery, which is a 4-minute walk from the venue.

Curator's Talk: Iarlaith Ní Fheorais

Life Drawing Room (Room 344), ATU Wellpark Campus, Galway
Monday 23 October 2023
11am - 1pm

TULCA’s Artist Talks Series continues for this year’s edition of TULCA Festival of Visual Arts: honey, milk and salt in a seashell before sunrise curated by Iarlaith Ní Fheorais. TULCA continues its long standing partnership with ATU School of Design and Creative Arts to bring you our popular curator’s talk along with talks by three of this year’s exhibiting artists every Monday for 4 weeks starting 23 October 2023. This year’s talks series will be hosted by ATU and Pálás Cinema.

Gain an insight into the curation of TULCA Festival of Visual Arts: honey, milk and salt in a seashell before sunrise. Curator Iarlaith Ní Fheorais will provide an overview of the festival theme and the curatorial principles that have guided her programme of unique artworks and events.

Curator Biography
Iarlaith Ní Fheorais Is a curator and writer, currently the curator of the 21st edition of TULCA Festival of Visual Arts. As a writer she has written for Frieze, Burlington Contemporary, Viscose Journal, Girls Like Us, and has an art and access column with Visual Arts News Sheet. She regularly contributes towards public programmes and lectures including at Somerset House, KW Institute, Konstfack University and Arts and Disability Ireland. Committed to anti-ableism in the arts, she published a free online access toolkit for artworkers in 2023.

TULCA Festival of Visual Arts
honey, milk and salt in a seashell before sunrise
Curated by Iarlaith Ní Fheorais
3 - 19 November 2023
Galway, Ireland

Access: ATU Wellpark Campus can be reached by driving, or getting the 401 bus from Eyre Square. ATU Wellpark Campus is wheelchair accessible with accessible toilet facilities.

Images: Mary McGraw
Video edit: Jonathan Sammon

TULCA Education Programme: Reflective Workshop

Join TULCA’s Education Coordinator Aoife Natsumi Frehan and Education Officer Kate McSharry for a full-day of guided reflection on the themes and artworks of TULCA 2022: The World Was All before Them.

The Reflective Workshop is a 4 hour long reflective session where the public is invited to delve in and discuss the artworks and themes of TULCA 2022 in the beautiful mid-nineteenth-century surrounds of 19 Eyre Square. Aoife and Kate will be guiding this process using some tools and activities, where you will have a space to discuss in depth your experience of visiting this year’s festival while hearing other people’s thoughts on the same. This workshop is open to a range of audience - from curious minds who want to develop their language of speaking about art, or practising artists who want to dissect their thoughts, or someone who wants to dip their toes into the world of artistic discussion. The only requirement is that you are open to discussing art!

Booking essential due to limited capacity.

Workshop time:
11am - 4pm (1hr break in between)
Saturday 19 November 2022

The workshop will last around 4 hours with 1 hour break in between. Due limited space, advance booking is essential. If there is someone who needs help getting around, please make sure to bring a helper. 

About TULCA Education Programme:

TULCA Education Programme is a unique programme that focuses on looking at and responding to visual art. It is about reaching out and engaging with schools and the wider community to create an increased awareness and a shared understanding of the Visual Arts. The programme engages a process of slow looking, reflection and response. Artist’s probe, question and investigate topics of social concern. TULCA’s Education Programme is designed to continue this process of critical thinking by creating a space for dialogue and learning exchange. It draws on individual personal experience and acknowledges that we all have our own set of visual codes, value systems, likes and dislikes.

Venue: 19 Eyre Square, Galway
Accessibility: restricted access, contact festival at info@tulca.ie
Parking: pay and display

TULCA Festival of Visual Arts
The World Was All Before Them
Curated by Clare Gormley
4 - 20 November 2022
Galway, Ireland