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.

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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

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

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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.

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Part Four: Performance

22:28

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.

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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.

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

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

Part Three: Artist Insights | TULCA 2024

40:24 min

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 three we present a series of short interviews with artists featured in TULCA Festival of Visual Arts. The series offers a deeper look into the work of the participating artists, exploring their creative processes, motivations, and themes behind their work. Presented across multiple galleries in Galway city, the series provides a reflective perspective on the role of contemporary art in the cultural landscape, highlighting the diverse voices that contribute to this annual festival in the west of Ireland.

Artists: Áine Phillips, John Carson, Catriona Leahy, Bryony Dunne, Niamh Moriarty, Julie Morrissy and Stuart Whipps.

Artist Insights was filmed at the Printworks Gallery in Galway with support from the Arts Council and Galway City Council.

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Part Three: Artist Insights

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

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Video documentation: Laura Griffin
Image: Installation view of Arc Film, 2003. Peter Fend & Finn Van Gelderen, Printworks Gallery, TULCA 2024. Photo: Ros Kavanagh

Part Two: TULCA Assembly | 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 two we present documentation of the TULCA Assembly, which took place last November at the PorterShed in Galway. This event brought together critical voices from Ireland, Europe, and the United States to share artistic research and engage with important questions surrounding the role of art-making, activism, and environmental discourse.

Speakers include: Micol Curatolo, Risteard Ó Domhnaill, Paul O’Neill, Kate O’Shea, Becky Nahom, Stephanie Smith and JD Whitman.

TULCA Assembly was produced in association with Askeaton Contemporary Arts. Supported by the Arts Council, Galway City Council and Askeaton Contemporary Arts.

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Part Two: TULCA Assembly

Micol Curatolo is a cultural worker in the field of contemporary art. Her research reflects on everyday borders, belonging and geography. Using border thinking, Micol investigates how arts and culture negotiate identity, participation, and experiences of migration. Micol works with multi-vocal and everyday formats. She is interested in creative work that addresses people and stories, their possible conflicts and their common emotions.

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Risteard Ó Domhnaill is an Irish documentary filmmaker and director. He is best known for directing the award-winning film “The Pipe” and the documentary series “Atlantic”. Born in Dublin in 1969, Ó Domhnaill has been making documentaries since 2003 and has garnered numerous awards for his work, including an IFTA for Best Documentary and a Peabody Award. In 2009, Ó Domhnaill released the critically acclaimed “The Pipe” which followed the struggle of a small Irish fishing village as they attempted to prevent a Shell oil pipeline that threatened to displace them. The film was a huge success, winning numerous awards including the Grand Jury Prize at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival. In 2012, Ó Domhnaill released the documentary series “Atlantic” which followed the fishing communities of Ireland, Scotland and Norway as they battled against the economic and environmental pressures of the modern world. The series was a great success, winning the Grand Prize at the 2012 Sheffield Documentary Festival, and it was also nominated for an Emmy.

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Dr. Paul O’Neill is an Irish curator, artist, writer, and educator. Paul is the Artistic Director of PUBLICS, since September 2017. PUBLICS is a curatorial agency, contemporary art commissioner and event space with a dedicated library and reading room in Helsinki. Between 2013-17, he was Director of the Graduate Program at the Center for Curatorial Studies (CCS), Bard College, New York. Paul is author of the critically acclaimed book The Culture of Curating and the Curating of Culture(s), (MIT Press, 2012), which has been translated into many languages. Paul has co-curated over 70 shows across the world, and is widely regarded as one of the foremost research-oriented curators, educators and scholar of curatorial practice, public art, and exhibition histories, and most has authored and co-edited numerous agenda-setting anthologies on curating. Paul has recently has published three artist’ books as author, co-editor; Maryam Jafri: Independence Days (2022), Kathrin Bohm: Art on the Scale of Life (2023), and Dave McKenzie Banners and Letters (2023). Paul is currently working on two new publications of his curatorial texts called Flip-Flopping Institutional Paradigms, and CURED planned for publication next year.

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Kate O’Shea works across printmaking, archiving, large-scale installation, performance, and publishing. Kate is co-founder of the transdisciplinary collective, Broken Fields, bringing together experience, knowledge, and practice from the fields of socially engaged art, architecture, community work, social movement archiving, activism, research, and writing. Kate co-creates the newspaper Gravity Express with Dr. Ciaran Smyth (Vagabond Reviews). Kate is co-founder with Victoria Brunetta of independent publishing house Durty Books. She is co-founder of The People’s Kitchen and is a member of Red Wheelbarrow Productions.

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Becky Nahom is the Director of Exhibitions at Independent Curators International (ICI), where she has developed numerous experimental exhibitions that support curatorial practice and challenge art historical narratives across the globe. During her time at ICI, Becky has overseen the series of exhibitions curated by alumni of ICI’s Curatorial Intensive and partnered with art spaces around the world to develop groundbreaking exhibitions such as Axis Mundo: Queer Networks in Chicano L.A., Soundings: An Exhibition in Five Parts, and Teddy Sandoval and the Butch Gardens School of Art among many others. Prior to joining ICI, Becky founded Halt Gallery in Phoenix, Arizona, which operated out of a renovated shipping container in the Roosevelt Row Arts District. She has also held multiple positions within the Scottsdale Arts Organization, as Assistant Preparator at the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art and Events + Exhibitions Assistant at Scottsdale Public Art, and holds a master’s degree in curatorial practice.

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Stephanie Smith is a Chicago-based curator, writer, and arts leader whose collaborative, socially engaged projects assert art’s power to envision and enact other futures. She values place-responsive, generous, and hospitable ways of working—honed through over 25 years of curatorial practice including senior roles at the University of Chicago’s Smart Museum of Art; Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; and Institute for Contemporary Art in Richmond, Virginia. In 2022, Smith joined Awi’nakola (“we are one with the land and the sea”), a project based in British Columbia in which artists, scientists, and Indigenous knowledge keepers are seeking effective responses to the climate crisis and working together to regenerate land and culture.

Key curatorial projects include Rashid Johnson: Monument (ICA), Feast: Radical Hospitality in Contemporary Art (Smart + tour, received Emily Hall Tremaine Exhibition Award) and Beyond Green: Toward a Sustainable Art (Smart + ICI + tour). Notable co-curated projects include Commonwealth (Beta-Local + Philadelphia Contemporary + ICA), Agora: 4th Athens Biennial, and Heartland (Smart + Van Abbemuseum). Smith teaches, writes, serves on the advisory board for MARCH, and was a contributing editor at Afterall journal. She served as Provostial Researcher at the University of Chicago’s Franke Institute for the Humanities (2022–2023), holds an MA from Rice University, and is researching Chicagoland—on long-term, place-based, artist-led projects in Chicago—for her PhD with the University of Amsterdam.

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JD Whitman is a SciArtist, educator, and ocean advocate specialising in science communication efforts for the plastic pollution crisis. For over a decade, her work has addressed rising levels of negative ecological emotions, declining marine biodiversity, marine ecotoxicology, and the mounting environmental and public health risks associated with microplastics and nanoplastics. She is currently a PhD researcher at the University of Galway and Burren College of Art and works as an External Expert in SciArt for the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission. Since 2016, she has spearheaded the digital preservation of Ireland’s Blaschka glass models of invertebrate species. JD received an MFA in Photography, an MFA in Sculpture, and an MA in Studio Arts from the University of Iowa and a BA from the University of Chicago with honors.

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TULCA Assembly was produced in association with Askeaton Contemporary Arts. Supported by the Arts Council, Galway City Council and Askeaton Contemporary Arts.

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

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Video documentation: Jonathan Sammon

Part One: Exhibitions | TULCA 2024

18:03

Documentation of Exhibition 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.

The 22nd edition of TULCA Festival of Visual Arts embedded itself in multiple venues and locations throughout Galway city and county in November 2024, accompanied by an extensive public programme and publication. Entitled The Salvage Agency, curator Michele Horrigan welcomed artistic proposals and artwork submissions that considered the agency and role of art in contemporary ecology and environmental study, as well as those that examine the underlying attitudes that have led to the critical and urgent impasse of our time.

The festival programme featured new commissions, artistic contributions, and exhibitions by 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.

TULCA 2024: The Salvage Agency was supported by The Arts Council, Galway City Council and Galway County Council.

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Part One: Exhibitions

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

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Video documentation: Jonathan Sammon
Photography: Ros Kavanagh