• News
  • Exhibitions
  • Programme
  • Talks
  • Podcasts
  • Education
  • Shop
Menu

TULCA Festival of Visual Arts

Street Address
City, State, Zip
Phone Number
TULCA Festival of Visual Arts

Your Custom Text Here

TULCA Festival of Visual Arts

  • News
  • Exhibitions
  • Programme
  • Talks
  • Podcasts
  • Education
  • Shop

News

Joanne Laws Interviews Sarah Browne, Curator of TULCA Festival of Visual Arts 2020

November 4, 2020 TULCA Festival of Visual Arts
Forerunner (Tom Watt, Tanad Williams & Andreas Kindler von Knobloch), Misplaced Concreteness (2017-ongoing), Grizedale Arts, UK, curated by Adam Sutherland; photograph by and courtesy of the artists

Forerunner (Tom Watt, Tanad Williams & Andreas Kindler von Knobloch), Misplaced Concreteness (2017-ongoing), Grizedale Arts, UK, curated by Adam Sutherland; photograph by and courtesy of the artists

Joanne Laws Interviews Sarah Browne, Curator of TULCA Festival of Visual Arts 2020

Joanne Laws: Can you discuss the curatorial brief for TULCA Festival of Visual Arts 2020? 

Sarah Browne: The title is borrowed from Colin Dayan’s 2011 book, The Law is a White Dog: how legal rituals make and unmake persons. Taking the law as a protagonist, the book draws together an unlikely community of subjects who have been denied personhood through its operations, as a means to sustain and uphold the social order – detained prisoners, racialised slaves, wanton women, refugees, abused animals. Conceived in the legal imagination in this way, these different classes of person are allocated unequal capacities for reason and for pain, and are distributed different rights to property – whether rights to own one’s own body, or to acquire land. What kind of psychic power must the law possess when it makes judgements about capacity or disability, and the need to confine such persons? Where Dayan’s book explores the interaction of personhood and dispossession within the USA, its themes find particular resonance in Connacht, the alternative to ‘hell’, as offered by Cromwell during the time of the Penal Laws and the mass evictions of the Plantation era in Ireland. Today, it offers new ways to recognise persistent legal spectres and zones of exception in the west of Ireland landscape, such as the asylum-seekers detained in Direct Provision Centres who are awaiting a ruling, and those who survived (or tragically died) inside state-approved religious institutions, such as the Mother and Baby Home at Tuam, or the industrial school at Letterfrack.

The curatorial brief departs from my own artistic research, and to a lesser extent my experiences as an artist. Last year, I was included in a group exhibition, ‘Irish Women Artists since 1984’. In 1983 the Eighth Amendment was added to the Irish Constitution and invented two different categories of person in law (the ‘mother’ and the ‘unborn’), whose rights were poised in temporary, hypothetical opposition. This experience made me realise that I am still haunted by this deeply-felt experience of conditional autonomy – personally and now in a professional context. None of this information was explicit in the exhibition title, but 1984 was a nod towards this horrible legal artefact. My practice had not been framed as that of an ‘Irish woman artist’ before, and while I understand that it is technically a fact, I felt somewhat disorientated by the designation. What does it do to an artist to describe their artwork through their assigned identity? What does this reveal, or hide from legibility? These were some of the concerns that I brought to the curation of this year’s edition of TULCA.

JL: Were there any unexpected themes emerging among proposals selected through the open call? 

SB: Artists applying through the open call were invited to consider their work as forms of address that could relate to processes such as bearing witness, giving testimony, granting pardon, lodging complaint, forming contracts, presenting evidence – or steadfastly refusing to speak in those terms. This invitation was like pouring molten lead into water and watching to see what shapes might emerge. It was scheduled to close on 20 March, a deadline which we extended by a week, as it coincided almost exactly with the initiation of COVID-19 workplace closures and movement restrictions in Ireland. There were 180 eligible applications, and I spent a number of weeks reading through the proposals and parsing through the possibilities, following up with artists, taking the temperature. In this way, the curation and overall form of the festival has evolved very much in and through the temporality of the lockdown, and the shifting public health guidelines and public sentiment due to the pandemic. The concerns of the brief, which touch on institutionalisation and confinement, have seemed unnervingly close.

The process of seeing and imagining connections between different practices was very rewarding, to feel the project begin to come alive through the responses. It was a privilege to discover practices very intimately that I hadn’t encountered at all before. The process of witnessing my own response to what was set in motion by the open call was as surprising as anything else: a deeper sense of the west of Ireland, folklore and landscape has seeped into the project than I could have expected. While the curatorial brief addresses traumatic histories, the artists involved in the project have many tactics of investigation, proposal and response, and this includes colour and music and joy in ways that I couldn’t have anticipated.

Maud Craigie, Indications of Guilt Part I (still), 2020, HD video, 50 minutes; courtesy of the artist

Maud Craigie, Indications of Guilt Part I (still), 2020, HD video, 50 minutes; courtesy of the artist

JL: In what way does your experience as an artist influence your values as a curator? 

SB: I’ve tried to model as a curator some of the more enriching experiences I have had while working as an artist. A curator can contribute very significantly to an artistic practice: this might be through developing discourse and writing about work in a context, restaging it in a certain way, or putting certain relationships in place (with other artist practices or in an exhibition space). Sometimes a curator can find ways of securing resources for a practice, whether material or immaterial. I have invested my energy into this kind of curatorial work that is collaborative and mutually developmental, rather than working simply as an adjudicator. This involves working to build transparency and trust in relationships. With an awareness of the pandemic, it has also been particularly important to get the balance of invitation right: to know when that feels like an opportunity and when it feels like an unwelcome demand. What is ‘too much’ in a time of great fatigue, stress and anxiety? What feels like meaningful and rewarding work at this time?

The presentation is based on what I feel is the best treatment of each artwork and there is no hierarchy between exhibition and event-based programming. There is no ‘main programme’ and ‘support programme’. Funding was secured from Galway County Council for Forerunner (Tanad Williams and Andreas Kindler van Knobloch) to produce a new, site-specific intervention in the An Post Festival Gallery, and to deliver a professional development workshop to Galway-based artists. Soft Fiction Projects (Emily McFarland and Alessia Cargnelli) will carry out a workshop with members of shOUT! and CAPE youth groups. Caroline Campbell (Loitering Theatre) will also expand her intergenerational feminist project, Protest Archive, through a workshop format. Academics from the Law School and Centre of Human Rights at NUIG, such as Dr Maeve O’Rourke, have been generous contributors to the research and will also feature in some of the discursive elements of the public programme and the book. This kind of sharing across disciplinary knowledge boundaries is also very important to me.

It’s an exciting opportunity for an artist, and a challenge, to take this kind of temporary role in an organisation too. The Law is a White Dog aims to develop understandings of personhood that are rich and complex, particularly in relation to capacity, and my curatorial proposal also involved a provision for training with Arts and Disability Ireland for myself and members of the TULCA team, including the Board. This was also offered to partner organisations and artists in the project, for whom accessibility is an emergent concern or an ongoing research focus. I’m interested in how the concern of an artwork or curatorial project is not simply ‘content’ but can impact how an organisation functions and communicates.

Kevin Mooney, Mammal, 2020, oil, distemper and acrylic on jute, 140 × 120 cm; courtesy of the artist

Kevin Mooney, Mammal, 2020, oil, distemper and acrylic on jute, 140 × 120 cm; courtesy of the artist

 

JL: What can viewers expect to encounter when festival venues open on 6 November? 

SB: The festival includes a book, a podcast series, a series of workshops, a billboard and screening programme at PÁLÁS cinema, as well as an exhibition of artworks and other artefacts. Even audiences who cannot visit Galway will be able to experience some facet of The Law is a White Dog. There will be two significant group presentations in the An Post Festival Gallery and Galway Arts Centre. 126 Artist-Run Gallery will host a solo presentation by Rory Pilgrim of their film project The Undercurrent. Engage Studios, formerly a medical centre and before that an industrial school, will be the location for a new solo presentation by Saoirse Wall – a ‘fable-film’ titled Invalids of Love. Not all of the artefacts on view in the exhibition are artworks, or are made by professional artists: there is also a video made by A.M. Baggs, a non-speaking autistic activist (who died this year), and a selection of artefacts known as bata scóirborrowed from the National Museum on view in Galway City Museum. All exhibition venues are wheelchair accessible, except for the first floor of Galway Arts Centre. Pre-booking will be necessary for some venues. Of the 20 artist presentations in the exhibition and public programme (including three collaborative entities), 12 were invited and eight were selected through the open call. There are a further two contributions which are presented only in the book. 18 presentations are new works or have never been exhibited in Ireland before.

JL: How have preparations for this year’s festival been impacted by COVID-19 public health measures? 

SB: What if a technician or producer or artist gets sick? What if I get sick? How can contracts be adapted to protect artists, and the organisation? No headphones, no communal seating, no touching anything. How much longer will installation take? What about volunteers, how can they be kept safe? When will delayed funding decisions be announced so the budget can be clarified? Online or ‘not–online’, do artists want to do that? There’s no money for that. When would we decide to cancel? When do we decide to announce?

TULCA is a partnership organisation without a full-time staff or a venue, so the ‘feasibility’ criteria, integral to the open call, was very hard to get a fix on. It became clear that international travel would be impossible to plan for, and live performances that we could schedule would be fewer. Certain hoped-for collaborations sadly couldn’t happen. Mainly, confident communication has been extremely difficult, both internally with artists and the team, and externally with the wider public. Even as I write this, we are in our first week of installation and can’t be sure that we will get to open. The very question of what an audience might expect, desire or risk through visiting a contemporary art exhibition has been thrown into a different light by the pandemic. Curating the festival has been a way of being in close touch at a distance and has given a rich sense of moving through this historical moment with others.

Sarah Browne is an artist based in Dublin.
sarahbrowne.info 

TULCA Festival of Visual Arts 2020, titled ‘The Law is a White Dog’, is scheduled to run from 6 to 22 November 2020, pending government restrictions and public health advice. For the full programme and list of participating artists, visit the TULCA website tulca.ie


Source: https://visualartistsireland.com/tulca-fes...

Announcement: Revised TULCA 2020 Programme

November 3, 2020 TULCA Festival of Visual Arts
Rory Pilgrim, The Undercurrent, 2019.jpg

Announcement: Revised TULCA 2020 Programme


TULCA Festival of Visual Arts is pleased to present a new book and two outdoor installations in Galway City during the two weeks of the festival run, 6 - 22 November, as well as the following online programme:


Mondays: TULCA Artists' Talk Series in partnership with GMIT CCAM.
More information and booking here
Tuesday - Fridays: Podcast episodes released online, featuring artworks and reflective pieces.
More information here
Saturdays: Online Workshop Series. More information and booking here

Rescheduling of indoor exhibitions and screening events will be subject to COVID-19 restrictions and public health advice.

“The events of the last weeks involving the seal of records of the Mother and Baby Homes Commission testify to the enduring and contested force of law in shaping cultural memory through generations. Law can protect and defend but also silence. This is an important moment to share the work of the artists in the TULCA programme, The Law is a White Dog.

While we can’t yet open the doors to the exhibitions or host live performances, there are many parts of the programme that will be accessible for audiences to experience from 6 November. These include a billboard in Galway city, the first collaboration between Vukasin Nedeljovic and Felispeaks. I’m also excited that we can share a newly-published book and a podcast series, both of which place artworks in dialogue with lawyers, advocates and activists such as Justice for Magdalenes Research, Máiréad Enright, Maeve O’Rourke, Eilionóir Flynn and Maria Ní Flatharta. These publications and broadcasts from Galway bring together contemporary art and socio-legal research of national and international significance.

New projects are being developed for The Law is a White Dog by Caroline Campbell (Loitering Theatre) and Soft Fiction Projects that will be shared online. These projects involve collaboration with an older generation of feminist activists, and with CAPE and shOUT! youth groups in Galway, respectively. Art happens even when galleries are closed. Now is a valuable time to reflect and attend to those practices, wherever we find ourselves.”
– Sarah Browne, Curator
 

TULCA 2020 The Law is a White Dog Programme Details:

  • Nov 2: TULCA Curator’s Talk with Sarah Browne in partnership with GMIT CCAM

  • Nov 6-16: Billboard artwork on view in the Claddagh by Vukasin Nedeljovic and Felispeaks

  • Nov 6: Project launch: The Law is a White Dog limited edition book. Available to order online from Kenny’s Bookshop. Order here

  • Nov 7: Grey Eminence: a performance over Zoom by Caroline Campbell (Loitering Theatre) in collaboration with Sarah Clancy. Moderated by Megs Morley. More details and booking here

  • Nov 9: TULCA Artists' Talk with Vukasin Nedeljkovic in partnership with GMIT CCAM. Book here

  • Nov 14: Afterthought: Professional development workshop for artists by Forerunner (Tanad Williams and Andreas Kindler von Knobloch). Supported by Galway County Arts Office. More details and booking here

  • Nov 16: TULCA Artists' Talk with Sibyl Montague in partnership with GMIT CCAM. Book here

  • Nov 16-22: Usually or Infrequently Indecent or Obscene, by Soft Fiction Projects, developed in partnership with shOUT and CAPE youth groups, Galway. Digital zine available online and poster installation in Galway City Library

  • Nov 23: TULCA Artists' Talk with Saoirse Wall in partnership with GMIT CCAM. Book here
     

For ongoing updates, please sign up to the TULCA newsletter or follow us on social media at @TulcaFestival. For further information please contact: info@tulca.ie 


TULCA Festival of Visual Arts
The Law is a White Dog curated by Sarah Browne
Launches 6 November 2020
Galway, Ireland

www.tulca.ie

Image: Rory Pilgrim, still from The Undercurrent (2019-ongoing). Courtesy andriesse eyck galerie

Call for participants by Soft Fiction Projects (closed)

October 10, 2020 TULCA Festival of Visual Arts
tulca - zine making workshops with soft fiction projects

Call for participants by Soft Fiction Projects

'Usually or Infrequently Indecent or Obscene'

The starting point for the project is based on a range of printed materials (feminist magazines) banned in the time period between 1967-1977, linked to the repression of sexuality in Ireland. The Censorship of Publications Act (1929, 1946, 1967) established the Censorship of Publications Board in Ireland. These laws enabled the prohibition of the sale and distribution of ‘unwholesome literature’, the censorship of books, magazines, and certain legal proceedings. What is the creative and social impact of censorship today? Who decides what is ‘unwholesome’?

Soft Fiction Projects will collaborate with a group of young people in the Galway region through a series of DIY design workshops to create a limited edition print and a digital zine. 

This project is a collaboration with Youth Work Ireland.

More info contact Lisa: cape@youthworkgalway.ie

TULCA 2020 Volunteer Programme - Applications Now Open

October 2, 2020 TULCA Festival of Visual Arts
TULCA Volunteers 1.jpg

TULCA 2020 Volunteer Programme - Applications Now Open


Do you want to be part of the West of Ireland’s most exciting Visual Arts Festival?

TULCA Festival of Visual Arts is now accepting applications for its 2020 Volunteer Programme. TULCA 2020: The Law is a White Dog is curated by Sarah Browne and runs from the 9th to 18th December 2020 across gallery spaces and venues in Galway City.

If you have a love of the arts and want to be part of an energising team then TULCA Festival of Visual Arts is the place for you! Volunteer shift hours are from 12pm-3pm or 3pm-6pm everyday during the duration of the Festival. We ask volunteers to commit to at least 2 shifts during the festival. If there is a particular area of interest you would like to work in, TULCA will do our best to accommodate.

Tasks Include: 

  • Preparing spaces for installation

  • Invigilation of the gallery spaces and venues

  • Supporting education workshops


Gallery Assistant Gallery Duties
: Gallery invigilation, assist with promotional activities, ensure audience are adhering to latest HSE guidelines for social distancing, mask wearing and other regulations pertaining to COVID-19 safety measures across venues.

Educational Duties: Represent TULCA, meet & greet, support/assist with gallery tours, usher groups between venues, support/assist workshop facilitators, supervision support, ensure groups are adhering to latest HSE guidelines pertaining to COVID-19 safety measures

Participating in TULCA Festival gives you hands-on experience of the time, energy, drive and ambition that goes into the production and running of a contemporary visual art festival. TULCA Festival values those that volunteer with us as most of the TULCA team started out as volunteers. We seek to provide an enriching, educational, and uplifting time for all of our volunteers.

COVID-19 Safety Measures: The safety of our volunteers and audience is our top priority. We plan to keep a safe environment by strictly adhering to HSE safety guidance as they pertain to venues and indoor gatherings. In addition, volunteers may help us in documenting contacts, taking temperatures, and general sanitization of the venue spaces. TULCA will provide PPE and sanitization materials to volunteers and staff. All audience members, volunteers, artists, and staff will be instructed to wear masks, maintain social distancing, and follow COVID-19 safety measures in all venues throughout the festival.


Join Our Volunteer Team!

Please contact volunteer@tulca.ie for further information.

www.tulca.ie/volunteer

Open Call: Galway x Kaunas Artist’s Residency (closed)

September 30, 2020 TULCA Festival of Visual Arts
Alannah Robins_Interface.JPG

TULCA Festival of Visual Arts and Galway 2020 European Capital of Culture are delighted to announce Galway x Kaunas Artist’s Residency Open Call.

The open call invites artists born or based in Lithuania to apply for a four week residency at INTERFACE deep in the heart of the Connemara landscape.

Galway City and County have the honour of hosting the European Capital of Culture in 2020 on behalf of the Irish nation. As part of the Galway 2020 programme TULCA has been commissioned to produce a number of projects throughout 2020 and into 2021 and the Galway x Kaunas Artist’s Residency is one of these projects.

A four-week artists; residency at Interface, a studio and exhibition space in the Inagh Valley, Connemara, County Galway. This initiative plans to create links with Kaunas, the 2022 European Capital of Culture. This residency is an opportunity for a Lithuanian artist to visit Ireland, create new works in isolation, and to help us to forge exciting creative collaborations between Galway and Kaunas into the future.

Speaking about this amazing opportunity Marilyn Gaughan-Reddan, Head of Programme, Galway 2020 European Capital of Culture, said, “Our programme at Galway 2020 is built on partnership and collaboration, all of our projects have wonderful European partnerships, it’s great to build this strategic relationship with Kaunas 2022 and look forward to exploring artist opportunities between our two cities for years to come.”

TULCA Festival of Visual Arts is a multi-venue, artist-centred festival of contemporary art that takes place annually in Galway, on Ireland’s West Coast. Every year, TULCA works with an Irish curator to present innovative exhibitions and events that provoke and energise audiences through Visual Art.

The Residency:
Interface residency is based in a former Salmon Hatchery, a series of long, low-lying modernist buildings on the shores of Derryclare Lough. The facility was bought by the current owners in 2007 to develop a centre of scientific research and development. Since then, dozens of artists have completed residencies at Interface, creating unique projects at the interface of science and art.

What we offer:
The Interface studio shares premises with the Inagh Valley Trust which drives several innovative scientific research projects in the Valley. The residency offers artists an opportunity to engage with a unique environment and be inspired by the research taking place in this spectacular landscape. Access to the studio building is 9am – 5pm, Monday to Friday, so it is a good idea to plan your work around this. The resident artist has the use of a 15m2 private space as well as access to 90m2 shared studio space. Accommodation is twenty-two kilometres away at Connemara Getaway, a self-contained apartment at High Moyard. The organisers will provide the successful applicant with a car to travel between the apartment and the studio. It is necessary to be a confident and experienced driver with a full clean drivers license, and good spoken English to avail of this residency.

We are inviting artists born or based in Lithuania to apply for this residency. The successful artist will be selected via open call and will be awarded the four-week residency at Interface. All costs and accommodation will be covered, and a small stipend will be provided. The successful artists will be asked to take part in a mediated online talk/public presentation of their work during the final week of the residency.

Criteria for the successful artist are listed below: 

  • Artist born in or based in Lithuania.

  • A professional artist working in contemporary visual arts practice.

  • An element of scientific or research-based practice would be preferred to fit with the existing curatorial themes and interests of the Interface residency.

  • Artist must be available within the proposed timeframe.

  • Artist must be able to drive and hold a full, clean European drivers licence (this is essential due to the isolated location.)

  • Artist must speak English to at least an intermediate level


How to apply:

Please provide the following information in English:

  • Artists CV and biographical information

  • Artists statement

  • Up to 10 examples of documentation of your work (photography, video and sound files all accepted)

  • A letter explaining why this opportunity appeals to you, what your ideas are and how you would propose to use the time at Interface.


Deadline:
Friday 30 October 2020, 5.00pm
Email applications to: daiva.j@kaunas2022.eu
Results will be announced by 30 November 2020

COVID-19 information:
The Artist will be living and working alone in a place of great natural beauty, without much contact with other artists. In this way, the artist will be isolated and compliant with all government guidelines around COVID-19. Interface’s full Covid-19 safety protocol is available upon request.

For further information:
Kaunas 2022 European Capital of Culture - https://kaunas2022.eu/en
Galway European Capital of Culture 2020 - https://galway2020.ie/en
TULCA Festival of Visual Arts - https://www.tulca.ie
Interface Inagh - https://interfaceinagh.com

← Newer Posts Older Posts →

2019

curator

open call

news

press

opportunties

volunteer

education

about

mission

funding

who we are

archive

TULCA 2025
Curator
Open Call

TULCA 2024
Curator
Open Call
Artist Insights
Programme
Gallery Map
Talks

TULCA 2023
Curator
Open Call
Artists
Programme
Gallery Map
Talks

News
Reviews
Talks
Podcasts
Education
Volunteer
Shop

Opportunities
Mailing List
Funding
Board
Team
Mission
Contact

TULCA
Earlswell Court
Cross St Lower
Galway H91 N6WK
Ireland

e: info@tulca.ie

ac-funding-visual-arts-ke-rgb-black.png
GCC logo black landscape.png
gcc-logo.jpg

Mailing List

© 2025 TULCA Festival of Visual Arts | Registered Charity No. CHY20745
Privacy | Governance | Constitution