Free publication available to order (postage not included).

Nothing to Look Forward To But The Past
Curated by Gregory McCartney
Edited by Susanna Galbraith

TULCA Festival of Visual Arts and Galway 2020 European Capital of Culture present:
Nothing to Look Forward To But The Past
Abridged 0_72

Once Upon a Time, (in 2012), Abridged’s Gregory McCartney was invited to curate a festival in Galway by TULCA, a visual arts organisation in the city. He was delighted, his delight being closely flowed by terror. He’d never curated an entire festival before and had been in Galway exactly once (strangely enough as an artist in TULCA 2008 curated by George Bolster) so he was worried he would be more than a bit out of his depth. He also was concerned that his particularly aesthetic and philosophical sensibility (which is very Northern and very Abridged) would be alien to local audiences. At any rate he dove right in and gave the festival one of the most Abridged titles ever: ‘What Became of The People We Used To Be?’ taken from the theme of an iconic 1970s TV series ‘What Ever Happened To The Likely Lads?’ which documented the mainly failed and failing hopes and dreams of two northern English likely lads.

The concept behind the festival was essentially a question – how did we get here? – and what happened to our hopes, our ambitions, our dreams? The curator wasn’t looking for answers per se but rather wanted to survey the state we’re in from an Abridged perspective, leaving it to the audiences to find their own paths into and out of the world that was presented to them. At any rate, the festival seemed to be popular and the curator had a wonderful time. Though he has to apologise for all the pain he put the great people organising the festival through!

So, when he was asked last year to take part once again in TULCA, he was once again delighted to. It seemed logical to revisit the same territory, so he, for the third time (there was a show with the moniker ‘Tomorrow’s Almost Over’ in Void, Derry, in 2013) revisited the Likely Lads theme tune for a title. In Nothing To Look Forward To But The Past, the curator continues with the Abridged themes that lay behind TULCA 2012 exploring concepts of ‘journey’ and ‘journeying’ in an evolutionary/environmental context that considers both its micro and macro contextualities. And asks the question: Is there really anywhere to go?

The online exhibition/publication explores through abstraction and metaphor the fragility of our times, our society and indeed ourselves. We are not separate from nature. We cannot theme-park it and hope it behaves itself. We cannot make it human. The wolves are always at the door. The Earth isn’t a mother. Or a she. It doesn’t care. If we aren’t careful it will devour us. We are the only species that has the capability for self-destruction. We are the only species that would build a Doomsday Clock. We are the only species that would want to. As the social, economic and actual environment is in the process of being destroyed we are carried on a journey to God knows where and yet we turn to those that would deny the existence of any sort of crises to save us, or if not to save us, to offer us the opportunity for one long last scream.

The Covid-19 pandemic reinforced and changed the nature not only of the project but of everything. More artists, essayists and poets were added and the scope was widened out to also investigate our relationship with both our concepts of history and the here and now. This is a time for mythmaking and for history as myth instead of fact. We can see the rise of the conspiracy theorists and their offer of alternate realities that seek to muddy the waters so much that facts are no longer recognisable and who offer the past as a golden age now destroyed. These are dangerous times. And people are asking themselves: ‘What Became Of The People We Used To Be?’ Their conclusions, these days, are always frightening.

More info: www.abridged.zone/nothing-to-look-forward-to-but-the-past