Columban Hall
Sea Road, Galway
Tues-Sun, 12-6pm
Welcome to the 19th edition of the TULCA Festival of Visual Arts, curated by Eoin Dara under the title: there’s nothing here but flesh & bone, there’s nothing more.
Developed over the last year under different levels of lockdown between Ireland, Scotland and several other countries where some of the contributors to the programme reside, the festival seeks to gently offer up some conversations around closeness and connection at a time when we are just beginning to gather again in proximity to one another.
This project is an aggregate of many unwieldy things including wet caresses, soft affection, immortal loves, necessary resistance, quiet rest, careful togetherness, boundless longing, abiding loss, honeyed scents, close correspondence, vocal exaltation, enduring solidarity, unexpected intimacies, ecstatic whispers and deep tenderness.
The title of the festival this year is lifted longingly from George Michael’s 2006 masterpiece Outside which advocates for an abundance of physical intimacy in public spaces.
Some of the artworks in the programme focus on different kinds of bodies — on flesh and bone — exploring how we inhabit them and connect with others (both living and dead, real and imagined); how we use them to resist or repair; how we care for them; how we find grace within them; and
how we love and nurture them. Other projects reach back in time to touch forgotten figures, retell overlooked histories, and excavate lost narratives in order to try and understand our contemporary condition a little better. There are further works that reach across the world during the pandemic to craft community and togetherness when travelling to be with one another was impossible, and works that chart epic journeys into the unknown together, thinking towards an uncertain future in a world humankind has transformed irrevocably.
The contributors to this year’s programme are artists, filmmakers, writers and poets:
Sophia Al-Maria, Claire Biddles, Renèe Helèna Browne, Miriam de Búrca, CAConrad, Mariah Garnett, Lauren Gault, Patrick Hough, Adrien Howard & K Patrick, Jasmine Johnson, Vishal Jugdeo & vqueeram, Stanya Kahn, Theodore Kerr, Sekai Machache, Mira Mattar, The Many Headed Hydra, Mícheál McCann, Tonya McMullan, Harun Morrison, Isobel Neviazsky, Laura Ní Fhlaibhín, Nisha Ramayya, Amanda Rice and Jay G Ying.
There are artworks to see in the form of films, drawings, paintings, sculptures and installations. There are artworks to listen to in the form of soundscapes. There is an artwork to smell in the form of a perfume. There is correspondence to read in the form of love letters. There are talks to attend. There is a workshop to taste. There is a performance to witness. Take things slowly. Use your body, listen to it, be gentle with it — there’s nothing more.
Mariah Garnett
The Pow’r Of Life Is Love (13min, 4k video installation, 2021) is the first iteration of a large scale moving image project that uses artist Mariah Garnett’s great-great aunt Ruth’s archival materials as a point of departure to discuss broader connections between colonialism, self-help culture, spirituality, and art-making in the anthropocene and a state of perpetual war.
Ruth was an American composer and spiritualist who lived in Cairo from 1924 until her death
in 1960. While there, she dubiously acquired an ancient stone head which housed a spirit named TAA, who quickly became her lover, confidant, and writing partner. In 1935, they wrote a grand opera which has never been produced. TAA’s communications to Ruth were chronicled in a series of diaries that outline visions, ruminations on esoterica, politics, and funding sources for her artwork.
The Pow’r Of Life Is Love begins with a staging of Act III, Scene I of Ruth’s opera, A Diadem
of Stars. This is the first public presentation of the music, which reappropriates the original score, stripping back its orientalist overtones, to create a newly-inflected operatic vignette that centres the virtuosity of opera singers Breanna Sinclairé and Christopher Paul Craig. True to its title, The Pow’r Of Life Is Love celebrates the talents and longstanding friendship of Sinclairé, a renowned professional soprano, and tenor Christopher Paul Craig of the LA Opera. The pair met at San Francisco Conservatory of music, where Sinclairé was the first trans woman to earn a masters in the opera program. Originally conceived by Ruth as a romantic love scene, Garnett’s staging calls to mind other configurations of love, empowerment, survival, and familial and human connection.
Produced during a period of lockdown, The Pow’r Of Life Is Love foregrounds efforts for connection in isolation as the two central figures orbit around each other like planets, singing about their shared mystical visions.
The second part of the video is culled from Ruth’s diaries from the 1930s, which chronicle her frustrated artistic ambitions and soothing psychic dispatches received from her spirit lover— reinterpreted here as a portrayal of queer desire—who sings in a chorus of AI-generated voices.
A takeaway artwork is also on display in the space which holds an excerpt from Ruth’s diary’s, chronicling an intimate exchange of love and reassurance between her and the spirit TAA.
Tonya McMullan
For TULCA this year artist Tonya McMullan has created a scent for the festival which appears close to the entrance of each exhibition venue across the city. This artwork, titled There’s something in the æther, takes the form of a limited edition perfume (and accompanying scented hand sanitiser) for you to sample, smell and wear if you wish.
It contains water from the Corrib river; honey from Galway bees; rainwater from Edinburgh; and a careful mix of hedione, geosmin, and isoamyl acetate. The particular chemical compounds in this scent have been selected to encourage our bodies to consider togetherness and intimacy in new ways after such a long period of isolation over the course of the pandemic. Beside the scent in each venue you will find a postcard with further details on this olfactory proposition.
Loving Correspondence
You will also find a letter written by Jay G Ying on a wall of the gallery.
This text forms part of the publication for TULCA 2021, which comprises a small folio of intimate correspondence written over the past year from writers and poets in different parts of the world including Sophia Al-Maria, Claire Biddles, CAConrad, Theodore Kerr, Sekai Machache, Mira Mattar, Mícheál McCann, Nisha Ramayya and Jay G Ying.
These are letters of love and longing, written towards someone or something just out of reach.
Further letters are on display at the other festival venues, as well as in the windows of Galway City Library. You can purchase the full set of letters in person at the An Post gallery, or online at tulca.ie. 50% of the proceeds from all sales of the publication will be donated to Medical Aid for Palestinians. You can find out more about their work at map.org.uk