ATU Wellpark Road
Galway, H91 DY9Y
Tuesday 19 November 2024
2pm - 3.30pm

TULCA’s Artist Talks Series returns for this year’s programme The Salvage Agency curated by Michele Horrigan. Continuing its longstanding partnership with ATU School of Design and Creative Arts, TULCA will host presentations by three exhibiting artists every Tuesday beginning on 5 November 2024. This year’s series will take place at ATU Wellpark Road and Galway City Museum.

Sean Lynch

Sean Lynch lives and works in Askeaton, County Limerick. He represented Ireland at the Venice Biennale in 2015. Prominent solo exhibitions include City Hall, Melbourne (2023), Edinburgh Art Festival (2021); Henry Moore Institute, Leeds (2019); Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin (2017); Charles H. Scott Gallery, Vancouver (2016); Rose Art Museum, Boston (2016), Modern Art Oxford (2014) and Hugh Lane Gallery (2013). He has held fellowships and been a visiting professor at universities and colleges in the United Kingdom, United States and Canada, and is a graduate of the Stadelschule, Frankfurt. In Dublin, he regularly exhibits at the Kevin Kavanagh Gallery and in early 2024 presented a two-person collaborative exhibition at The Complex with Laura Ní Fhlaibhín. Alongside Michele Horrigan, he works at Askeaton Contemporary Arts, an artist-led residency, commissioning and publication initiative situated in the west of Ireland and nomadically since 2006.

The talks are free and open to everyone, but advance booking is necessary.

Access:
We aim to ensure that our event is accessible to all individuals interested in attending. If you have access related questions, please contact info@tulca.ie

ATU Wellpark Road
Accessible venue
Accessible toilets
Accessible parking

Printworks Gallery
15 Market Street, Galway, H91 TCX3
Sunday 17 November
1pm - 2.30pm

TULCA Education Coordinator, Aoife Natsumi Frehan, is pleased to invite you to a workshop taking place in the Printworks Gallery for TULCA 2024. Aoife designed this workshop taking inspiration from the installations by artists Niamh Schmidtke and David Beattie. Participants will create a memory map of their own, followed by a guided discussion.

This workshop will explore and examine the similarities and the differences in the way a person associates an object to another through their individual means of organisation.

You will need to bring something you can take some notes with. Ideally a notebook and a pen/pencil or a tablet so you can draw if you feel this is the best way to represent a connection you made between objects.

Capacity: 30
Age: 18+

Access
We want our event to be accessible to anyone who is interested in attending. If you have access related questions, please contact education@tulca.ie

Printworks Gallery
Accessible venue
No toilets
Accessible parking (Market Street)

Image: Niamh Schmidtke,‘X’ Mapping, 2021

Printworks Gallery
15 Market Street, Galway, H91 TCX3
Sunday 17 November
12pm - 1pm

Join Michele Horrigan for a walk around the Printworks Gallery to hear about the development of the TULCA 2024 programme.

Michele Horrigan

Michele Horrigan is an artist and independent curator. Since 2006 she is founder and curator of Askeaton Contemporary Arts, facilitating artist experimentation and residencies, exhibitions and publication production in rural County Limerick. Over one hundred projects have been realised with a particular interest in contemporary art engaged in site-specific, ecological and social practice. Many artworks made in this context have subsequently been presented throughout the world in exhibitions, art biennials and film festivals.

Since 2014, she is editor and publisher of A.C.A. PUBLIC, a publication venture with over twenty titles exploring the many meanings and relationships between art and the public realm. Michele has curated exhibitions and public programmes at VISUAL Centre for Contemporary Art, Carlow; EVA International - Ireland’s Biennale of Contemporary Art, Limerick; Kunstvlaai Biennial for Experimental Art, Amsterdam; Catalyst Arts, Belfast; Lismore Castle Arts; Irish Architectural Archive, Dublin and The National Women’s Council of Ireland, amongst others. Exhibitions of her artwork have been presented at Tenerife Espacio de las Artes, Frankfurter Kunstverein and Temple Bar Gallery & Studios, Dublin. In addition, her writing, essays and articles have been commissioned for, among others, Mousse Publishing, Winter Papers, Paper Visual Art Journal, Dundee Contemporary Arts and Bomb Magazine.

Michele studied art at the University of Ulster, Belfast and the Städelschule, Frankfurt. She is a member of IKT, the international association of curators of contemporary art, and an active collaborator with New York’s Independent Curators International. In 2022 she was presented a Civic Award by Limerick City & County Council in recognition of her ongoing curatorial work in Askeaton. In 2024 she will present the activities of Askeaton Contemporary Arts at the Curatorial Forum held at EXPO CHICAGO on the theme of Curating and the Commons. She continues to develop artistic and curatorial projects for PUBLICS, Helsinki, Flat Time House in London, Schloss Britz in Berlin, and The Model, Sligo.

Image: Lily Van Oost, title and date unknown. Courtesy of Grace Wells

The talks are free and open to everyone, but advance booking is necessary.

Access:
We want our event to be accessible to anyone who is interested in attending. If you have access related questions, please contact info@tulca.ie

Printworks Gallery
Accessible venue
No toilets
Accessible parking (Market Street)

Printworks Gallery
15 Market Street, Galway, H91 TCX3
Saturday 16 November
12pm - 1pm

Peter Fend and Ocean Earth have over five decades of proposed speculative and visionary ecological projects that rethink the relationships between art, power and the planet. A global figure in contemporary art, Fend sees its potential for radical change with the use of biomass, seaweed, wind and wave power, and his ideas have often led him into friction with the representatives of government agencies, Big Oil and energy suppression. In conversation with artist Sean Lynch, he outlines what role Ireland has to play in these dialogues.

The talks are free and open to everyone, but advance booking is necessary.

Image: Independence from Big Oil, 2003, courtesy Finn Van Gelderen, Jenny Haughton and Artworking

Access:
We want our event to be accessible to anyone who is interested in attending. If you have access related questions, please contact education@tulca.ie

Printworks Gallery
Accessible venue
No toilets
Accessible parking (Market Street)

ATU Wellpark Road
Galway, H91 DY9Y
Tuesday 12 November 2024
2pm - 3.30pm

TULCA’s Artist Talks Series returns for this year’s programme The Salvage Agency curated by Michele Horrigan. Continuing its longstanding partnership with ATU School of Design and Creative Arts, TULCA will host presentations by three exhibiting artists every Tuesday beginning on 5 November 2024. This year’s series will take place at ATU Wellpark Road and Galway City Museum.

Michael Holly

Bridging the divide between documentary film and the artworld, Michael Holly’s moving image productions appear regularly on Only in Askeaton, an online platform initially developed by Askeaton Contemporary Arts during COVID-19 lockdowns. Exploratory in nature and intensively curious about how art is discussed, made and disseminated in Irish society, his subjects and topics have ranged from curator Lucy Lippard’s 1985 exhibition of Irish art, ‘Divisions, Crossroads, Turns of Mind’, to a profile of writer and artist Adrian Duncan’s decade-long investigation of Bungalow Bliss – a collection of affordable house designs that resulted in thousands of new dwellings appearing in Irish towns and countryside since the 1970s.

Holly’s presence at TULCA weaves in and out of fellow artists in the exhibition, offering insights into their creative paths and intrinsic relationships to landscape and nature. Holly follows Seanie Barron collecting timber in the Limerick countryside, to be transformed into walking sticks. In one scene, Barron turns to the camera with a piece of knotted wood and proclaims its likeliness to a faraway galaxy. Lily of the Valley, realised in collaboration with Mieke Vanmechelen, digs deep into the memories, documents and artworks that today remain of Lily Van Oost’s legacy, including the archival unearthing of her Brian Boru’s Coat, a gift she made to the National Museum of Ireland after receiving Irish citizenship in 1986.

The talks are free and open to everyone, but advance booking is necessary.

Access:
We aim to ensure that our event is accessible to all individuals interested in attending. If you have access related questions, please contact info@tulca.ie

ATU Wellpark Road
Accessible venue
Accessible toilets
Accessible parking

Zoology and Marine Biology Museum and Geology Museum
University of Galway
Sunday 10th November
1pm - 2.30pm

TULCA Education Coordinator, Aoife Natsumi Frehan, is pleased to invite you to a workshop taking place across two museums at the University of Galway. The workshop has been designed by Aoife, drawing inspiration from her discussions with Stuart Whipps and his artistic practice. Participants will engage in creating a personal memory map in the Zoology and Marine Biology Museum, followed by a guided discussion in the Geology Museum, where Stuart’s works are exhibited.

The workshop aims to explore and analyse the similarities and differences in how individuals associate objects, focusing on their unique methods of organisation.

Participants are advised to bring a means for taking notes—ideally a notebook and pen/pencil, or a tablet—to facilitate drawing or note-taking as they identify connections between objects.

Capacity: 15
Age: 18+

Access
We want our event to be accessible to anyone who is interested in attending. If you have access related questions, please contact education@tulca.ie

Zoology and Marine Biology Museum
Wheelchair accessible
Accessible toilets
Accessible parking (in front of the Quadrangle Building)

James Mitchell Geology Museum
Not wheelchair accessible
Toilets

Printworks Gallery
15 Market Street, Galway, H91 TCX3
Saturday 9 November
12pm - 1pm

The TULCA Education team is excited to offer a child friendly tour outside of academic and group bookings. We use the model of Visual Thinking Strategies to facilitate an inclusive, audience-centred discussion. These would take a conversational format that invites participants to share their interpretation of the work, focusing on hosting a space of discussion. Together, we will celebrate the breadth of conversation that can flourish through the shared experience of looking together. There will be worksheets that can be taken home afterwards, catered to different levels of interest in the arts which include a reflective exercise and a practical element. 

This workshop is suitable for any learners in between 5th class all the way up to Leaving Certificate or equivalent. However, the group will be split if the age difference in the participants is too great.

*Please be aware that bookings must be made 24 hours prior to the time the tour starts.

If you are interested in booking a tour outside of these dates, have specific requests or access needs, please reach out to Aoife at education@tulca.ie to make a booking.

Access
We aim to ensure that our event is accessible to all individuals interested in attending. If you have access related questions, please contact education@tulca.ie

Printworks Gallery
Wheelchair accessible
No toilets
Accessible parking (Market Street)

Galway City Museum
Spanish Parade, Galway, H91 CX5P
Tuesday 5 November 2024
2pm - 3.30pm

TULCA’s Artist Talks Series returns for this year’s programme The Salvage Agency curated by Michele Horrigan. Continuing its longstanding partnership with ATU School of Design and Creative Arts, TULCA will host presentations by three exhibiting artists every Tuesday beginning on 5 November 2024. This year’s series will take place at ATU Wellpark Road and Galway City Museum.

Ruth Clinton and Niamh Moriarty

A Collection of Disarticulated Bones is an ongoing research platform and artistic endeavour by Ruth Clinton and Niamh Moriarty, developed through fieldwork and active questioning of cultural identity in Ireland, Spain and the United States over the last year. Their aim is an ambitious one: to unpick the various foundation myths of the Global North – institutional, pop cultural and embodied.

A collection of new films, photographs and objects is planned for display at TULCA, developed in a new initiative involving a production residency with the University of Galway and Galway City Museum, and partners in the United States – Solas Nua in Washington DC and Virginia Tech Institute of Creativity, Arts and Technology.

In each context, Clinton and Moriarty keep asking how stories and narratives are shaped and told, interpreted and circulated. Their initial findings point to the vital role of the individual to bear witness to history, no matter how offbeat or bizarre it might initially be perceived. In one short film, a former member of An Garda Síochána, who now runs a luxury wedding car-hire service, talks of witnessing a UFO while on patrol in the 1990s. His story was reported in the newspapers of the time with an air of credibility, due to his stature as a figure of authority in Irish society. Another vignette follows the story of a long-retired naval officer, once aboard the ship that repatriated W.B. Yeats’ remains from the south of France back to Sligo in 1948. Today, doubts exist as to whether these were, in fact, Yeats’ bones. Then, outside a supermarket near Coleraine, a replica of the Giant’s Causeway appears…

The talks are free and open to everyone, but advance booking is necessary.

Access:
We aim to ensure that our event is accessible to all individuals interested in attending. If you have access related questions, please contact info@tulca.ie

Galway City Museum
Accessible venue
Accessible toilets
Accessible parking (located on Saint Augustine street - 4 minute walk)

Printworks Gallery
15 Market Street, Galway, H91 TCX3
Sunday 3 November
12pm - 1pm

Join Michele Horrigan for a walk around the Printworks Gallery to hear about the development of the TULCA 2024 programme.

Michele Horrigan

Michele Horrigan is an artist and independent curator. Since 2006 she is founder and curator of Askeaton Contemporary Arts, facilitating artist experimentation and residencies, exhibitions and publication production in rural County Limerick. Over one hundred projects have been realised with a particular interest in contemporary art engaged in site-specific, ecological and social practice. Many artworks made in this context have subsequently been presented throughout the world in exhibitions, art biennials and film festivals.

Since 2014, she is editor and publisher of A.C.A. PUBLIC, a publication venture with over twenty titles exploring the many meanings and relationships between art and the public realm. Michele has curated exhibitions and public programmes at VISUAL Centre for Contemporary Art, Carlow; EVA International - Ireland’s Biennale of Contemporary Art, Limerick; Kunstvlaai Biennial for Experimental Art, Amsterdam; Catalyst Arts, Belfast; Lismore Castle Arts; Irish Architectural Archive, Dublin and The National Women’s Council of Ireland, amongst others. Exhibitions of her artwork have been presented at Tenerife Espacio de las Artes, Frankfurter Kunstverein and Temple Bar Gallery & Studios, Dublin. In addition, her writing, essays and articles have been commissioned for, among others, Mousse Publishing, Winter Papers, Paper Visual Art Journal, Dundee Contemporary Arts and Bomb Magazine.

Michele studied art at the University of Ulster, Belfast and the Städelschule, Frankfurt. She is a member of IKT, the international association of curators of contemporary art, and an active collaborator with New York’s Independent Curators International. In 2022 she was presented a Civic Award by Limerick City & County Council in recognition of her ongoing curatorial work in Askeaton. In 2024 she will present the activities of Askeaton Contemporary Arts at the Curatorial Forum held at EXPO CHICAGO on the theme of Curating and the Commons. She continues to develop artistic and curatorial projects for PUBLICS, Helsinki, Flat Time House in London, Schloss Britz in Berlin, and The Model, Sligo.

Image: Catriona Leahy, Bog Thing*: Assembly* for the Symbiocene, 2024

The talks are free and open to everyone, but advance booking is necessary.

Access:
We want our event to be accessible to anyone who is interested in attending. If you have access related questions, please contact info@tulca.ie

Printworks Gallery
Accessible venue
No toilets
Accessible parking (Market Street)

ATU Wellpark Road
Galway, H91 DY9Y
Tuesday 22 October 2024
2pm - 3.30pm

TULCA’s Artist Talks Series returns for this year’s festival programme The Salvage Agency curated by Michele Horrigan. Continuing its longstanding partnership with ATU School of Design and Creative Arts, TULCA will host the popular curator’s talk in ATU Wellpark Road on Tuesday 22 October at 2pm.

The TULCA Artist Talks Series will continue throughout the festival run with presentations by three exhibiting artists every Tuesday beginning on 5 November 2024. This year’s series will take place at ATU Wellpark Road and Galway City Museum.

Join us to gain insight into the curation of TULCA Festival of Visual Arts: The Salvage Agency. Curator Michele Horrigan will discuss the festival's theme and the curatorial principles that have shaped her selection of unique artworks and events.

Michele Horrigan

Michele Horrigan is an artist and independent curator. Since 2006 she is founder and curator of Askeaton Contemporary Arts, facilitating artist experimentation and residencies, exhibitions and publication production in rural County Limerick. Over one hundred projects have been realised with a particular interest in contemporary art engaged in site-specific, ecological and social practice. Many artworks made in this context have subsequently been presented throughout the world in exhibitions, art biennials and film festivals.

Since 2014, she is editor and publisher of A.C.A. PUBLIC, a publication venture with over twenty titles exploring the many meanings and relationships between art and the public realm. Michele has curated exhibitions and public programmes at VISUAL Centre for Contemporary Art, Carlow; EVA International - Ireland’s Biennale of Contemporary Art, Limerick; Kunstvlaai Biennial for Experimental Art, Amsterdam; Catalyst Arts, Belfast; Lismore Castle Arts; Irish Architectural Archive, Dublin and The National Women’s Council of Ireland, amongst others. Exhibitions of her artwork have been presented at Tenerife Espacio de las Artes, Frankfurter Kunstverein and Temple Bar Gallery & Studios, Dublin. In addition, her writing, essays and articles have been commissioned for, among others, Mousse Publishing, Winter Papers, Paper Visual Art Journal, Dundee Contemporary Arts and Bomb Magazine.

Michele studied art at the University of Ulster, Belfast and the Städelschule, Frankfurt. She is a member of IKT, the international association of curators of contemporary art, and an active collaborator with New York’s Independent Curators International. In 2022 she was presented a Civic Award by Limerick City & County Council in recognition of her ongoing curatorial work in Askeaton. In 2024 she will present the activities of Askeaton Contemporary Arts at the Curatorial Forum held at EXPO CHICAGO on the theme of Curating and the Commons. She continues to develop artistic and curatorial projects for PUBLICS, Helsinki, Flat Time House in London, Schloss Britz in Berlin, and The Model, Sligo.

The talks are free and open to everyone, but advance booking is necessary.

Access:
We aim to ensure that our event is accessible to all individuals interested in attending. If you have access related questions, please contact info@tulca.ie

ATU Wellpark Road
Accessible venue
Accessible toilets
Accessible parking

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

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

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

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

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

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

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