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.
James Mitchell Geology Museum
The Quadrangle, University of Galway
Galway H91 FN8X
Access
Not wheelchair accessible
Steps/stairs venue
Accessible toilets (Quadrangle)
Accessible parking (Quadrangle)
Accessible video tour (online)
Seating provided
Opening Times
8-23 November 2025
Tues-Sun 12-6pm (closed Mon)
Getting There
10-minute walk from Eyre Sq.
Bus: stop 523031 University Road
Paid parking nearby
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