The Longest Shadow Ever Cast

Presented as a satellite installation and event series, The Longest Shadow Ever Cast takes place at 334 Broome Street, New York, extending TULCA 2025’s exploration of shared histories and shifting terrains, and features a sister exhibition that houses the second part of Peter Tresnan’s diptych, with the first part on display at Galway Arts Centre. It is accompanied by an event programme organised by Tresnan, which gathers works by local artists and TULCA contributors. Over the weekend, the programme will include a reception, an artist talk, and a screening series reflecting on memory, distance, and the Irish diasporic experience.

TULCA Festival of Visual Arts
Strange lands still bear common ground
Curated by Beulah Ezeugo
7-23 November 2025
Galway, Ireland

TULCA Education: Language Tours
TULCA Gallery
Hynes Building, St Augustine Street, Galway, H91 R6WF
11–16 November & 18–23 November 2025, 12–6pm

TULCA Education presents a series of Language Tours offering visitors the opportunity to experience the exhibition through different languages.

Each tour will be delivered by a member of the TULCA Education team and live translated by a native speaker. Depending on the group, translation may be directed to individuals within a larger tour or offered to the entire group.

Languages available: Irish, Japanese, and Brazilian Portuguese.

Prior booking is essential to ensure translator availability.
To book a Language Tour, contact education@tulca.ie

TULCA Festival of Visual Arts
Strange lands still bear common ground
Curated by Beulah Ezeugo
7-23 November 2025
Galway, Ireland

Image: Laura Giffin Photography, 2023

Across all TULCA Galleries

11-16 November 2025
18-23 November 2025
12-6 pm

The Education Team is pleased to announce the availability of pre-booked Audio Description Tours for TULCA 2025. Participants will have the opportunity to select any artwork they wish to have described by the TULCA Education Team, comprising Aoife Natsumi Frehan (Education Coordinator) and Kate McSharry (Education Officer). Following the audio description of the artworks, a guided discussion will take place, during which participants will be encouraged to share their experiences and insights regarding the works.

Audio Description tours are available upon booking any day during TULCA 2025. The tour duration is 45 minutes. Please note that Advance Booking is Essential for this tour, and bookings must be confirmed 24 hours prior to the start time of the tour. 

To make a booking, please contact Aoife Natsumi Frehan, Education Coordinator, at education@tulca.ie

Access: The TULCA Education team is based in the TULCA Gallery, Hynes Building during the festival.

• Tours can be arranged for other TULCA Galleries (each venue has its own capacity and accessibility).

• Visit our Access Page for more info.

• We are committed to ensuring all tours are accessible.

• Please inform us of any specific access needs when booking.

TULCA Festival of Visual Arts
Strange lands still bear common ground
Curated by Beulah Ezeugo
7-23 November 2025
Galway, Ireland

Image: Laura Giffin Photography, 2022

TULCA Education Coordinator Aoife Natsumi Frehan leads a special gallery tour designed for families and younger visitors. This informal session offers an opportunity for children and adults to explore the artworks together through guided discussion and shared observation.

Families, friends, and young visitors of all ages are welcome. Adults are encouraged to join the conversation alongside the young people they bring.

Please note: all young visitors must be accompanied by an adult at all times. Young people under 18 cannot be left unattended in the gallery.

To book a place, contact: education@tulca.ie

TULCA Festival of Visual Arts
Strange lands still bear common ground
Curated by Beulah Ezeugo
7-23 November 2025
Galway, Ireland

Across all TULCA Galleries

11-16 November 2025
18-23 November 2025
9am - 4pm

The TULCA Education Team is pleased to offer a series of gallery tours tailored for academic groups as part of TULCA 2025. These tours are designed for universities, colleges, post-primary schools, and primary schools, offering an opportunity for students and educators to engage with contemporary art in a meaningful and structured way.

Using Visual Thinking Strategies, the tours facilitate inclusive, learner-centred discussions that prioritize viewer interpretations over traditional information delivery. This approach encourages critical thinking and rich conversations, sparked by the shared experience of exploring art.

For academic groups, worksheets will be provided, tailored to different educational levels. These will include reflective exercises and practical activities that can be taken back to the classroom.

Group bookings for academic institutions are available during weekdays, with tours running every hour from 9am to 4pm. The tour duration is 45 minutes. Advanced booking is required.

Capacity: No minimum, maximum 40 per group (subject to venue capacity)
Age: Late primary school level and above

Bookings: To make a booking, please contact Aoife Natsumi Frehan, Education Coordinator, at education@tulca.ie

Access: The TULCA Education team is based in the TULCA Gallery, Hynes Building during the festival.

• Tours can be arranged for other TULCA Galleries (each venue has its own capacity and accessibility).

• Visit our Access Page for more info.

• We are committed to ensuring all tours are accessible.

• Please inform us of any specific access needs when booking.

TULCA Festival of Visual Arts
Strange lands still bear common ground
Curated by Beulah Ezeugo
7-23 November 2025
Galway, Ireland

Photo: NCAD visit to the TULCA Gallery, Hynes Building. Photo: Laura Griffin, 2022

Across all TULCA Galleries

11-16 November 2025
18-23 November 2025
9am - 4pm

The TULCA Education Team welcomes community groups to participate in our gallery tours as part of TULCA 2025. These tours are open to local residents, cultural organisations, youth groups, and other non-academic participants who are interested in engaging with contemporary art.

These tours are participant-led, fostering open discussions that focus on personal interpretation of the artworks, the spaces they inhabit, and the artists intentions. No prior knowledge of art is required. If your group has a specific theme or focus, please let us know when booking, and we will incorporate it into the discussion.

Group bookings for community organisations are available every day of the festival, with tours running every hour from 9am to 4pm. The tour duration is 45 minutes. Advanced booking is required.

Capacity: No minimum, maximum 40 per group (subject to venue capacity)
Age: Late primary school level and above.

Bookings: To make a booking, please contact Aoife Natsumi Frehan, Education Coordinator, at education@tulca.ie

Access: The TULCA Education team is based in the TULCA Gallery, Hynes Building during the festival.

• Tours can be arranged for other TULCA Galleries (each venue has its own capacity and accessibility).

• Visit our Access Page for more info.

• We are committed to ensuring all tours are accessible.

• Please inform us of any specific access needs when booking.

TULCA Festival of Visual Arts
Strange lands still bear common ground
Curated by Beulah Ezeugo
7-23 November 2025
Galway, Ireland

Photo: Gallery Tour with Oranmore Secondary School, Photo: Ros Kavanagh, 2024

Kate Morrell

The term ‘guaqueria’ – the act of looting archaeological sites – has been used in Colombia since the mid 19th century. Illicit excavations by guaqueros serve the existence of many public museums and private collections in Bogotá.

Within the film, looting is posited as political resistance, working in opposition to nationalist, colonial and Western-oriented approaches to archaeology and museum collecting practices.

The film centres around conversations with four Bogotána women, documenting their private collections of pre-Columbian ceramics, displayed within domestic settings and embedded within the interior architecture of their homes. We hear them speak of shifting value systems, rights and protections; engaging with urgent debates around cultural restitution and repatriation.

With (relatively recent) government laws put into place by the Ministry of Culture, prohibiting the export and transfer of cultural assets and stating that private collections must be declared; the women – identities withheld – articulate varied rationale for keeping commoditised objects (ceramics and gold) in circulation.

The film incorporates museum archive footage from 1980s–90s along with newly shot video and photography, interlacing the public and private, blurring ‘expert’ knowledge with non-scientific and personal language. Conversations are held in Spanish and part-translated to English to agitate further translation tensions and withholding of new knowledge.

Kate Morrell is an artist living and working in London. For the past 15 years she has worked with archives, collections and libraries to develop projects that identify and respond to under-researched or overlooked histories. This work questions the conventional logics that serve and organise collections. By doing this, it invites critical re-readings of the hierarchies and structures of power which are given voice in their presentation.

With a background in artist bookmaking, her practice is situated in the expanded field of publishing. She works primarily with print media – with sculpture, drawing and video as extensions of that.

She has developed diverse methods for working with collections of different scales and contexts. Projects include: documenting illegal, private collections of pre-Columbian ceramics, kept by housewives in Bogotá; research within the Jacquetta Hawkes Archive at the University of Bradford on the life and work of the British archaeologist, and a residency at a remote Swiss library, residing alongside ‘shelving robots’ in this innovative futuristic archive.

‘…Y el barro se hizo eterno (...And the Mud Became Eternal)’ is a short film developed during a 10 month British Council scholarship in Bogotá, Colombia.

Access notes
The film includes the voices of several women: the four collectors, a collector’s daughter, the translator, and the filmmaker. Conversations are held in Spanish and part-translated to English using half-screen subtitles on the right of the screen. The change of speaker is indicated by a colour change in the half-screen subtitle. Selected parts of the conversation are left untranslated and this is indicated via standard subtitles.

TULCA Festival of Visual Arts
Strange lands still bear common ground
Curated by Beulah Ezeugo
7-23 November 2025
Galway, Ireland

Image: Film still from ...Y el barro se hizo eterno (...And the Mud Became Eternal), 2020, HD video, 35 mins 42 secs

Chris Zhongtian Yuan

All Trace Is Gone, No Clamour for a Kiss is structured as a dialogue between two individuals in entangled intimacy and bodily distance - one reveals personal stories and ancestral tales; another one singing and telling family stories of sickness and war that circulates in the transnational family tree.

Through interweaving personal and historical narratives, the film wants to reveal the ghostly connections amongst Chinese, West African and Caribbean diasporas through a composition of free jazz, vocal improvisations and popular music. The music is composed and performed in collaboration with trumpeter Kevin G. Davy.

Alongside the film, seven unique clay sculptures casting fragments from the film; as well as a large-scale, A0 drawing which meticulously traces transnational sounds and texts which radically reposition geographies of the world.

Chris Zhongtian Yuan (b. 1988, China) is an artist based in London. Working with video, sound, performance, sculpture and installation, their work builds around the notion of ‘Punk filmmaking’, considering space, relation and context. Yuan often deploys improvisation techniques drawn from a wide range of music including punk, jazz and noise. As such, resistance becomes a nuanced, playful and collective act across cultures and places.

TULCA Festival of Visual Arts
Strange lands still bear common ground
Curated by Beulah Ezeugo
7-23 November 2025
Galway, Ireland

Image: Film still from All Trace Is Gone, No Clamour for a Kiss (2021-22), Single-channel video, 16mm film transferred to HD video, 21 mins 52 secs

Marie Farrington

For TULCA, Marie Farrington presents A Material Index of Diagonal Acts, a site-responsive sculptural installation at the James Mitchell Geology Museum, University of Galway.

The collection of objects offers an overview of the processes and material outcomes of Marie’s unfolding cross-site project Diagonal Acts, with new cast works directly responding to the Victorian display cabinets in the museum.

Incorporating artefacts from the University’s Geological Collection and local sediment samples from Dog’s Bay, the sculptural works register, respond to, and incorporate their site and context, reflecting on the conditions of their own visibility.

Installed across the central aisle of the museum, A Material Index of Diagonal Acts, reflects on gaps, fragments, edges and thresholds within archaeology, geology, sculpture and staged display. Cast objects explore the relationship between glass and visibility through arrangements that use framing, layering and transparency as vehicles for thinking about co-creative relationships.

Diagonal Acts explores the boundaries of the body in the landscape from various counter-topographical perspectives. The project expands on and elaborates a hybrid practice of Theatre/Archaeology (Shanks/Pearson, 2001) exploring symmetries between staged presentations and field work via their continual renegotiation of categorical boundaries and their shared interest in memory, partiality, fragment, trace and assemblage.

Through iterative material interventions and opportunities for activation, Diagonal Acts excavates the ‘/’ in Theatre/Archaeology as a site of interdisciplinarity, convergence, and borders reworked, articulated through the sculptural position of the diagonal line. Thinking across and between sites through conditional modes of encounter, Diagonal Acts explores diagonality as a relational and collaborative stance, temporarily ‘leaning’ against contexts, communities and histories.

Marie Farrington’s practice reflects on the act of making through geological and archaeological lenses. Using casting, carving and other sculptural processes, she engages with memory through situated encounters with landscape and architecture. Her work makes formal reference to field sampling, built heritage, and histories of display.

TULCA Festival of Visual Arts
Strange lands still bear common ground
Curated by Beulah Ezeugo
7-23 November 2025
Galway, Ireland

Image: Marie Farrington, Acts [catch/sift], 2025, mild steel; photograph by Brian Cregan courtesy the artist and Kunstverein Aughrim

Abel Shah

Collaborating since 2017, Abel Shah is an artist duo consisting of Alex Bell and Giulia Shah. Language and translation are core subjects in their practice - questioning the dissemination of knowledge and seeking alternative modes of communication. Through a poetic approach, they construct objects, texts, images, and sound that often manifest as multi-media installations, and build frameworks for dialogue and collaboration.

The relationships between image-object, physical-virtual, verbal-nonverbal, past-future, regeneration-decay are highly significant in their practice, reflecting the ongoing exchange and multitude of experiences that exist when making art as a non-singular artist. These are not thought of in binary or opposition, but as a constellation or dialectic diagram — where the tensions and flux of invisible structures/voids/the-in-betweeen blur notions of hierarchy and obstruct linear readability.

As a duo, collaboration and the idea of the host—holding space for others’ thoughts—are constantly present in their ways of working. Since 2018, they have been running Residency 11:11 from their home in London, a queer-run initiative reflecting their ambitions to find alternative forms of exchange. Their work has been shown at Tate Modern, Gallery Eenwerk, The Newbridge Project and The Corinium Museum.

TULCA Festival of Visual Arts
Strange lands still bear common ground
Curated by Beulah Ezeugo
7-23 November 2025
Galway, Ireland

Shift, Tilt, 2025, Oak frame, glass, steel embossing on paper, volcanic sand (collected by the artist’s mother from Basilicata, in southern Italy and sent by post to London. Photo: Jonathan Sammon

Abel Shah
Bojana Jankovic & Nessa Finnegan
Saoirse Amira Anis
Peter Tresnan
Tom O’Dea
Mourad Ben Amor

Strange lands still bear common ground reflects on movement and connection. Drawing on ancient cartographic practices and Galway’s maritime history, the festival asks what it means to be an island with fluid ties to the wider world, especially at a time when people and communities are increasingly displaced and fragmented. This year’s programme brings together artists who position themselves and their practices within a relational context and whose work invites reflection on proximity and exchange. Each of the works shown are grounded in situated encounters with distinct cities, cultures, creatures, and landscapes. They draw attention to the residues that surface at points of intense contact, and propose new possibilities that might emerge when familiar boundaries are unsettled.

TULCA Festival of Visual Arts
Strange lands still bear common ground
Curated by Beulah Ezeugo
7-23 November 2025
Galway, Ireland

Image: Mourad Ben Amor, still from Bamssi, 2024, video, colour, 26 mins

Caroline Mac Cathmhaoil
Seán O’Riordan
Jess Zamora-Turner
Mair Hughes
Emily Joy
Durre Shahwar
Caoimhín Gaffney

Strange lands still bear common ground reflects on movement and connection. Drawing on ancient cartographic practices and Galway’s maritime history, the festival asks what it means to be an island with fluid ties to the wider world, especially at a time when people and communities are increasingly displaced and fragmented. This year’s programme brings together artists who position themselves and their practices within a relational context and whose work invites reflection on proximity and exchange. Each of the works shown are grounded in situated encounters with distinct cities, cultures, creatures, and landscapes. They draw attention to the residues that surface at points of intense contact, and propose new possibilities that might emerge when familiar boundaries are unsettled.

TULCA Festival of Visual Arts
Strange lands still bear common ground
Curated by Beulah Ezeugo
7-23 November 2025
Galway, Ireland

Image: Mair Hughes, Installation view of A Field Guide to the Offa's Dyke/Canllaw Maes i Gladwdd Offa, 2025. TULCA Gallery, Hynes Building, Galway. Photo: Ros Kavanagh

A Collection of Ocean Waifs | Enya Moore & Kate O’Shea

A Collection of Ocean Waifs is an audio collaboration between Enya Moore, Kate O’Shea, Ron Bradfield Jnr, and Padraig Stevens. Through sound and spoken word, the work explores the legacies of The Wild Goose: A Collection of Ocean Waifs (1867), a handwritten newspaper created by Irish political prisoners aboard the Hougoumont - a ship that departed Portsmouth, England, and sailed to Walyalup (Fremantle, Western Australia). Produced and shared while crossing oceans, The Wild Goose not only occupied a space between colonial borders - it created a new one. The legacies of British imperialism and colonisation have forged complex, interdependent networks between colonised places that remain under-examined. Among these, the historical and cultural ties between Ireland and Australia are one of many deserving of exploration. This audio work draws on the story of The Wild Goose to bring together voices from both Ireland and Australia, creating a reflective space to consider how ‘strange’ lands may share common ground.

Enya Moore and Kate O'Shea are a collaborative duo that have cultivated an enduring artistic and research partnership that spans decades. Kate, usually based in Cork, Ireland, is currently undertaking an artist residency in Walyalup (Fremantle, Western Australia). Her creative practice includes printmaking, publishing under Durty Books, the newspaper Gravity Express (with Vagabond Reviews). Enya, based in Gadigal Country (Sydney, Australia), is a researcher, educator, and writer. Her work explores networks of solidarity, and cultural ecosystems as well as anti-colonial histories. Enya is a lecturer in design at the School of Architecture, Design and Planning in the University of Sydney, where Kate has collaborated with her in the Masters in Design programme. Over the years, they have continuously expanded their artistic and intellectual collaboration. In 2020, they co-developed Networks of Solidarity, a four-part online series bridging Gadigal Country and Dublin 8. Their recent projects include Social Space (Broken Fields Collective, Irish Museum of Modern Art, 2023), Art, What Is It Good For? (South Tipperary Arts Centre, 2023), and Broken Fields Micro Exhibition (46 Grand Parade, Cork, 2023).

Sound Editor: Alan Meaney

A Collection of Ocean Waifs was created by Enya Moore, Kate O'Shea, Ron Bradfield Jnr and Padraig Stevens who are based on and between Galway (Ireland), Walyalup (Fremantle) and Gadigal Country (Sydney).

It was created on and between the lands of the Gadigal people of the Eora nation, and the lands of the Whadjuk Noongar people of the Noongar nation. We acknowledge the Traditional Owners of these lands and waterways and extend our respect to their Elders, past and present.

Biographies

Padraig Stevens is a songwriter and musician who lives in Co. Galway

Ron Bradfield Jnr is a Bard, Jawi man of the saltwater peoples around Djarindjin, Western Australia. Born in Mooniemia (Northampton), he grew up in Jambinu (Geraldton), but now calls Walyalup (Fremantle) his home. As the CYO of Yarns R Us, Ron supports artists, arts professionals, arts organisations and institutions across Australia and overseas and is currently the Community Engagement Facilitator, with the John Curtin Gallery at Curtin University. As a storyteller and artist, Ron tells and makes stories that unpick his own personal experiences surviving our society and what it is to be ‘Australian’. As the eldest son of a Stolen Generations mother, Ron presents stories of himself as a child, as an adult and as an ex-serving member of the Australian Defence Force. Tapping into the physical memories of a time past through the use of familiar objects and Australian culture markers, Ron retells his stories, challenging today’s Australians about how they remember the places they grew up in and the experiences they had, well away from the reality of Aboriginal and Islander peoples.

References (in order of appearance in audio)

Stevens, P. (2025). We Sail Away [Song].

Flood, J., & O’Reilly, J. B. (1867). The Wild Goose: A collection of ocean waifs [Newspaper]. Published on the Hougoumont ship.

Stevens, P. (2025). How Strange Lands Still Bear Common Ground [Song]

Robinson, T. (2008) Stones of Aran: Pilgrimage, New York Review of Books.

Flood, J., & O’Reilly, J. B. (1867). The Wild Goose: A collection of ocean waifs [Newspaper]. Published on the Hougoumont ship. John Flood papers, comprising seven issues of the ship newspaper The Wild Goose, 1867, and Flood’s conditional pardon, 1871, Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Sydney.

Moore, E. (2025) Jumpcuts Essay, Jumpcuts: an exhibition by Kate O’Shea and Aideen O’Donavan, Moores Building Art Space, Fremantle, WA.

Kavanagh, S. (2025). Making spaces [Song].

Sullivan, C. W., III. (2002). Fenian diary of Denis B. Cashman: The Hougomont diary of Denis B. Cashman. Wolfhound Press.

O’Byrne, M. (2025, November 4). The Catalpa Escape Podcast Series (Episode 7) [Audio podcast]. In M. Barker (Ed.), Fremantle Shipping News. https://fremantleshippingnews.com.au/2025/11/04/the-catalpa-escape-podcast-series-episode-7

Butterly, C. (2025). “The flotillas reminded us all that the only sane response to a dystopian world is to have radical imagination.” Hot Press. https://www.hotpress.com/opinion/global-sumud-flotilla-the-flotillas-reminded-us-all-that- the-only-sane-response-to-a-dystopian-world-is-to-have-radical-imagination-23114753

McGrath, W. (1969). Convict ship newspaper, ‘The Wilde Goose’, re-discovered. Journal of the Cork Historical and Archaeological Society, 74(219), 20–31. Cork Historical and Archaeological Society.

TULCA Festival of Visual Arts
Strange lands still bear common ground
Curated by Beulah Ezeugo
7-23 November 2025
Galway, Ireland

Image: Rubbing of a plaque from the memorial The Wild Goose, in Rockingham, Western Australia. The plaque was unveiled on 29 March 2014 to commemorate the newspaper created by Irish political prisoners transported aboard the Hougoumont to Freemantle, Australia.