TULCA 2022 Curator: Clare Gormley
Curator Biography
Clare Gormley is a curator and researcher from and based in Belfast, Northern Ireland. She is Head of Programmes and Partnerships at Belfast Photo Festival, where her recent projects include the curation of Zanele Muholi’s first solo exhibition on the island of Ireland (2021), and major forthcoming commissions with artists including Kensuke Koike (2022) and Hannah Starkey (2023).
Clare is also the co-founder and Director, alongside Anna Liesching, of the Northern Irish Art Network (NIAN), a research, commissioning and curatorial platform supported by Tate, Paul Mellon Centre and British Council. Current and recent NIAN projects include a collaborative symposium with The Courtauld on ‘Northern Ireland’s Feminist and Queer Art Histories’; forthcoming exhibitions at Golden Thread Gallery and Ulster Museum; and a collaborative project with the African Artists Foundation to develop critical discourse around Northern Irish and Nigerian art practice.
Previously, Clare was Assistant Curator at The MAC, Belfast, where she worked across the visual arts programme, curating a range of exhibitions including the group show, ‘On Refusal: Representation & Resistance in Contemporary American Art’ (2019) and Ambera Wellmann’s solo exhibition ‘UnTurning’ (2021). Prior to this, Clare held curatorial and research positions at institutions including TATE; Pangolin London; Catalyst Arts; and Islington Exhibits, and has worked as an independent curator for organisations such as PS² and Outburst Queer Arts Festival in Belfast.
Clare is a graduate of the Courtauld Institute of Art (MA), and the Glasgow School of Art (BA) and is Alumni of Tate’s Emerging Curators Group and the Independent Curators International (ICI) Curatorial Intensive programme.
“I’m delighted to be curating the 20th anniversary edition of TULCA; a festival I’ve always admired as a platform and incubator for the visual arts in Ireland. As we somewhat emerge from the fog of the last few years, I’m very excited to be working with the TULCA team on an edition of the festival that both takes stock of our current moment and, hopefully, also provides a glimpse of the way forward as we reckon with the myriad challenges—ecological, societal, political and cultural—posed by our rapidly changing world. I’m particularly looking forward to exploring the work of artists, who are adept at problem-solving, world-making and asking questions about the future of our society, to see what they might have to offer us in this unprecedented moment.”
Clare Gormley, TULCA 2022 Curator
TULCA 2022: The World Was All Before Them will run in November 2022 across multiple venues in Galway city and county.
TULCA Festival of Visual Arts
The World Was All Before Them
Curated by Clare Gormley
4 - 20 November 2022
Galway, Ireland
www.tulca.ie