The passing of our dear colleague, Michael Mee

 

It is with heavy hearts that we share the news of the passing of our dear colleague, Michael Mee. Michael was a valued member of the TULCA technical team for many years, offering his expertise and support with a generous spirit. His passion for the arts and warm presence made him a beloved figure among our team and artists. Michael's dedication and compassion will be deeply missed. Our thoughts are with his wife, Mary, and his family during this incredibly difficult time.

Image credit: Michael Mee speaking at the Health Research Board - National Clinical Trials Office in October 2024.

 
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Part Seven: Reviews | TULCA 2024

 

Documentation of TULCA 2024

As we conclude our roundup of the 2024 TULCA Festival of Visual Arts, we are pleased to share the official video documentation of The Salvage Agency, along with a selection of reviews from Art Monthly, Studio International, Visual Artists' News Sheet, and the Irish Examiner. These reflections provide a critical look at the festival's themes and the works presented, offering valuable context for the discussions that unfolded throughout the programme.

We would like to express our gratitude to everyone who engaged with The Salvage Agency, whether through attending in person or participating online. Your involvement has been integral to the festival’s depth and reach. A special thank you goes to our festival partners and funders, whose support made this programme possible. We also wish to thank the TULCA Festival team for their dedication and hard work in bringing the festival to life and ensuring its success. Most importantly, we extend our heartfelt thanks to the artists whose contributions shaped the programme and whose work continues to resonate beyond the festival itself.

Contributors to The Salvage Agency: Seanie Barron, David Beattie, Stephen Brandes, John Carson, Ruth Clinton and Niamh Moriarty, Michelle Doyle and Cóilín O’Connell, Bryony Dunne, Peter Fend and Finn Van Gelderen, Regina José Galindo, Léann Herlihy, Michael Holly, Patrick Hough, Joan Jonas, Catriona Leahy, Julie Morrissy, Áine Phillips, Jorge Satorre, Niamh Schmidtke, Temporary Services / Half Letter Press / Breakdown Break Down Press / Public Collectors, Lily Van Oost and Stuart Whipps.

Reviews

TULCA Festival of Visual Arts
The Salvage Agency
Curated by Michele Horrigan
1-17 November 2024
Galway, Ireland

Video documentation: Jonathan Sammon

Image: Glass model of a comb-jelly (Beroë punctata) by Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka, circa 1880. Courtesy of the Zoology and Marine Biology Museum, University of Galway.

 
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Part Six: Artist Talks | TULCA 2024

 

Documentation of Public Programme | TULCA 2024

TULCA Festival of Visual Arts is pleased to share the public outcomes and online documentation of its 2024 programme, The Salvage Agency curated by Michele Horrigan.

In the penultimate instalment of our festival roundup, we spotlight a series of artist talks and tours from the TULCA 2024 programme. Continuing its strong partnership with the ATU School of Design and Creative Arts, TULCA hosted four artist talks in November 2024, held at ATU Wellpark Road and the Galway City Museum.

All talks and tours were recorded and are now accessible on the TULCA website as an educational resource.

Featured artists include Michele Horrigan, Ruth Clinton and Niamh Moriarty, Michael Holly, and Sean Lynch.

Curator’s Gallery Tour

Michele Horrigan
Join Michele Horrigan for a walk around the Printworks Gallery to learn about the development of the The Salvage Agency programme.

Artist Talks Series | ATU

Michele Horrigan
Michele Horrigan is an artist and curator, and the founder of Askeaton Contemporary Arts since 2006. She has facilitated over one hundred projects focused on site-specific, ecological, and social practices, including residencies, exhibitions, and publications in rural County Limerick. Many of these artworks have been showcased globally in exhibitions, biennials, and film festivals.

Ruth Clinton and Niamh Moriarty
Ruth Clinton and Niamh Moriarty are collaborative artists living and working in the North-West of Ireland. They use performance, video, sound installation and storytelling, along with a detailed research process, to convey visions of transience and resistance. Their recent work tests the possibility of creating a new narrative identity for Ireland that will acknowledge our struggles, admit our complicities and build our capacity for solidarity.

Michael Holly
Michael Holly’s moving image work bridges documentary film and the art world, often featured on Only in Askeaton, an online platform created by Askeaton Contemporary Arts during the COVID-19 lockdowns. His explorations cover topics like curator Lucy Lippard’s 1985 exhibition Divisions, Crossroads, Turns of Mind, and writer-artist Adrian Duncan’s decade-long study of Bungalow Bliss, a series of affordable house designs that shaped Irish architecture.

Sean Lynch
Sean Lynch lives and works in Askeaton, County Limerick. He represented Ireland at the 2015 Venice Biennale. His solo exhibitions include City Hall Melbourne (2023), Edinburgh Art Festival (2021), and Henry Moore Institute, Leeds (2019). He has held fellowships and taught at universities across the UK, US, and Canada, and is a graduate of Stadelschule, Frankfurt. Lynch regularly exhibits at Dublin’s Kevin Kavanagh Gallery and co-presented a 2024 exhibition at The Complex with Laura Ní Fhlaibhín. He also works with Michele Horrigan at Askeaton Contemporary Arts, an artist-led initiative since 2006.

TULCA Festival of Visual Arts
The Salvage Agency
Curated by Michele Horrigan
1-17 November 2024
Galway, Ireland

Video documentation: Jonathan Sammon
Photography: Ros Kavanagh

 
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Part Five: Publication | TULCA 2024

 

Documentation of Public Programme | TULCA 2024


TULCA Festival of Visual Arts is pleased to share the public outcomes and online documentation of its 2024 programme, The Salvage Agency curated by Michele Horrigan.

In part five, we present the latest publication from TULCA Publishing titled The Salvage Agency. This publication acts as a reader for the exhibition and public programme, giving further insights into the processes and intentions of The Salvage Agency and its various contributors.

Novelist and playwright Walter Macken’s short story The City, written in the early 1940s, finds Galway casting aside humanity’s desire for accumulation and riches, instead revealing a place that is of the earth, and of all lifeforms that inhabit it. Catching up, decades later, with Macken’s vision has been central to The Salvage Agency. How can we critically inform ourselves and act within the repositioning that society must now undertake in the ecological epoch ahead? How will authentic dwelling manifest itself, and what are the tenants for an egalitarian realisation of the making of place?

The Salvage Agency considers the agency and role of art in contemporary ecology and environmental action. Galway, on the edge of the northeast Atlantic, is a unique location for a heightened awareness of what is at stake. Explorations of landscape, seascape and nature, public space, colonial history, political structures, the industrial complex and folk narratives are all pertinent. These are paths taken by our collective society in the shaping of today’s world and a contemporary Europe.

This publication was produced on the occasion of the 22nd edition of TULCA Festival of Visual Arts, The Salvage Agency, curated by Michele Horrigan.

Texts: Michele Horrigan
Publisher: TULCA Publishing, Galway
Publication date: November 2024
Copyeditor: Joanne Laws
Design: Pure Designs
Printed on 120gsm / 250gsm Offset
Price: €10.00

 

TULCA Festival of Visual Arts
The Salvage Agency
Curated by Michele Horrigan
1-17 November 2024
Galway, Ireland

Image: The Salvage Agency publication. Photo: Mary McGraw

 

Part Four: Performance | TULCA 2024

 

Documentation of Public Programme | TULCA 2024

TULCA Festival of Visual Arts is pleased to share the public outcomes and online documentation of its 2024 programme, The Salvage Agency curated by Michele Horrigan. In part four, we present performances produced as part of the festival programme.

Stuart Whipps' The Leviathan of Parsonstown draws inspiration from the historic telescope at Birr Castle, Offaly, highlighting the intersection of scientific discovery and material extraction. Whipps’ work also connects to the James Mitchell Geology Museum in Galway, where he has developed a new performance piece, collaborating closely with curator John Murray and the museum’s artefacts.

Léann Herlihy's Beyond Survival School Bus is a 90-minute bus tour blending pedagogy and performance. The tour explores the impact of survivalism, examining its social implications and critiquing the emphasis on individual preparedness over collective action for societal and environmental change.

Part Four: Performance

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Performance: The Leviathan of Parsonstown | Stuart Whipps

Birmingham-based artist Stuart Whipps’ new performance and installation, The Leviathan of Parsonstown, shares its title with the name given to the historic telescope that sits in the ornate grounds of Birr Castle in Offaly. Built in 1845, it remained the largest telescope in the world for seventy-two years, drawing visitors to see the previously unknown spirals of faraway galaxies. Its creation was driven by intense curiosity and the tremendous personal wealth of the wife of its patron, William Parsons. Whipps points out the materials that made one of Ireland’s greatest scientific wonders possible: ‘Parsons saw the potential in using speculum metal, an alloy made from copper and tin, as the material for the reflective mirror – in order to learn about the stars above our heads, we must first extract metals from the rocks and mud that sit beneath our feet.’

Continued research for Whipps has led to the James Mitchell Geology Museum, founded in 1852 at the University of Galway with thousands of rock, mineral, and fossil specimens, along with the remains of a larger natural history museum once on campus. Still appearing as a nineteenth- century room with few modern updates, it is referred to by many as a ‘museum of a museum’. Given full access to the collection throughout 2024, Whipps has worked closely with the site, artefacts and the generosity, endless knowledge and enthusiasm of curator John Murray, teasing out a new performance artwork and a subtle rearrangement of objects and labelling in the museum.

Performance: Beyond Survival School Bus | Léann Herlihy

Beyond Survival School Bus (2024) is a free 90-minute bus tour with a pedagogical discourse that spans from eighteenth-century hedge schools to twenty-first-century school tours.

Departing from the urban sphere and commencing its voyage deep into the mountains, the school’s curriculum explores the polemic effects of ‘self-perseverance’ through the social practice of survivalism; moving through examples such as an assimilated ‘outdoor’ swimming pool situated in a 15-story underground survival bunker designed for those who hoard economic wealth, to skimming the surface of open resources available from online prepping communities. Delving into the lack of depth within these social movements, Ranger Herlihy forewarns of the damaging effect of implicated de-prioritisation of collective scale action—that is, the point at which preparing for the potential risks brought about by environmental, economic and/or societal damage supersedes the more important task of advocating for structural and revolutionary change. Utilising the scripted nature of reality survival shows, Ranger Herlihy provides a participatory script to each scout and invites them to take up a single role spanning from Doomsday Prepper alumni, ‘Warrior’ Martin to ‘eco crusader,’ Al Gore.Continuing in their journey beyond survival, the collective narrative moves towards building a future where both humans and nonhumans, deemed unproductive by utilitarian standards, are valued for their own nature. Yet, creating space to stray away from the ‘natural,’ as these un-natural positions, offer alternative views for imagining new, just, and sustainable ways of living beyond survival.

TULCA Festival of Visual Arts
The Salvage Agency
Curated by Michele Horrigan
1-17 November 2024
Galway, Ireland

Video documentation: Jonathan Sammon
Image: Installation view of The Leviathan of Parsonstown exhibition, James Mitchell Geology Museum, University of Galway, 2024. Photo: Stuart Whipps