Paula Fitzsimons: Holding Water | An Post Gallery
TULCA presents Holding Water, a durational live performance by Paula Fitzsimons, as part of the 2026 festival programme.
Holding Water is a live performance action by Paula Fitzsimons first performed in May 2025. The performance took place at Malin Head, the northernmost point of Ireland, overlooking the North Atlantic Ocean. In this singular action the artist challenges humanity’s relationship to the sustainability of living natural resources, particularly resonant with island life and contemporary culture. It questions human behaviours that unsettle the Earth’s ecological balance, including the melting of Arctic ice caps and ocean depletion caused by the mining of rare-earth minerals for advanced technologies. In the performance, Fitzsimons references art-historical imagery, particularly evoking the Pietà as a sorrowful reflection imbued in the image of cultural traditions of an Earth Mother.
Paula Fitzsimons
Paula Fitzsimons is an Irish artist whose practice includes photography, video, text, spoken word, drawing and live performance, addressing the politics of sexual identity, the body in the landscape, the poetics of loss and the role of action as a carrier of meaning. Fitzsimons’ interventions respond directly to cultural heritage with particular focus on women’s experiences, investigating identity, society and political histories from poetics to philosophy. Fitzsimons’ exhibitions include performances and photography in Ireland, Britain, France, Poland, Austria, Sweden and Italy, with moving-image installations in Japan, South Korea and Dubai. She is interested in bringing the audience close on a shared journey of ‘making’ to realise works that are transient and experiential. From 2014 to 2023, Fitzsimons was part of the Royal College of Art School of Arts and Humanities community, completing an MA in Painting with distinction in 2016. Fitzsimons was awarded a practice-based PhD in 2023 for her project titled 'Up Against the Wall: From Resistant to Dynamic, A Journey in Culture, Encountering the Limit in the Process', a research that encompassed Irish outdoor handball alleys, women’s voices in Irish culture and the writings of James Joyce. This body of work was articulated through performance, photography and poetic text to reflect on how future generations may inhabit the world. Most recently in 2025 Fitzsimons made a series of live performance works in the city of Vienna as part of ‘Parole of an Apparition’ performance art festival. She was part of ‘IMMERSION X’ a living sculpture exhibition of cutting edge volumetric video (VR) presented in 2025 in the city of Gothenburg, Sweden curated by Jonas Stampa and Xiao Ge. Her video titled ‘Holding Water’, a live to camera performance recorded early in 2025 at Malin Head, was shown at the Saatchi Gallery, London as part of ArtEvol2025. In September 2026 she will make a series of live performance works at Gothenburg Live Action Festival. From 2023 (ongoing), Fitzsimons has been working with the Irish Museum of Modern Art on ‘Nigel Rolfe: The Living Archive’, funded by IMMA and the Paul Mellon Centre.
Free, no booking required
An Post Gallery
18 William Street
Galway, H91 E009
Access
Wheelchair accessible
Step-free access
No toilets
Seating available
Accessible parking (Eyre Square)
Event Time
7 November 2026
12–2pm
Getting There
3-minute walk from Eyre Sq.
Nearest bus stops: Francis St / Eyre Sq.
Paid parking nearby
TULCA Festival of Visual Arts
Veruca Salt
Curated by Sinéad Keogh
6–22 November 2026
Galway, Ireland
Image: Performance still of Holding Water, image courtesy of the artist.