UnSelfing 2021 Programme: Upcoming Projects

UnSelfing 2021 Programme: Upcoming Projects

TULCA Festival of Visual Arts 
Galway 2020 European Capital of Culture
1 February 2020 - 30 April 2021
 

UnSelfing is a programme of visual art exhibitions, performances and encounters commissioned by TULCA Festival of Visual Arts for Galway 2020 European Capital of Culture.
Launched in February 2020 with the inaugural exhibition Deep States curated by Helen Carey presenting the work of artists; Dominic Thorpe (Ireland), Veronika Merklein (Austria and Germany), Andrej Mircev (Croatia), Nikoleta Markovic (born in Yugoslavia), Eunseo Yi (Republic of Korea).

Followed by two exhibitons; Threads by artist Austin Ivers curated by Sarah Searson and online exhibition and publication Nothing to Look Forward to But the Past curated by Gregory McCartney with artists; Stuart Cairns, Nadege Meriau, Daniel Seiffert, Tara Wray. Writers: Prof. Lorna Piatti-Farnell, Prof. Peter Knight, Dr Dara Downey, Anna Walsh, Gail McConnell and Sharon Young.

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic the remainder of the programme has been further reimagined and repositioned with projects taking place in April 2021.

A VISIT, A CEREMONY, A GIFT

TULCA Festival of Visual Arts and Galway 2020 European Capital of Culture present:

A VISIT, A CEREMONY, A GIFT
Curated by Kate Strain
New film commission - premiere ONLINE via tulca.ie
16 April 2021, 9pm

A Visit, A Ceremony, A Gift is a new film commission curated by Kate Strain as part of the TULCA UnSelfing programme for Galway 2020 European Capital of Culture, supported by The French Embassy in Ireland.

The film focuses on the research and practice of Austrian artist and philosopher Elisabeth Von Samsonow who has been inspired by the role of the White Goddess, and the Deep Ecology movement. Elisabeth von Samsonow uses an alphabet based on trees native to both Ireland and Austria, to create poetry and uncover its’ origin in the woods.

Participating artists: Marielle MacLeman, Ruth Le Gear, Ruby Wallis and Michaële Cutaya, Michelle Doyle, Liliane Puthod, Naïmé Perrette and Sara Sadik; will contribute new work through film, sculpture, music, sound and design investigating the access to nature through poetic language.

A Visit, A Ceremony, A Gift connects distant places by investigating the enduring challenge that all people face. That is, trying to understand the mysterious languages of nature in trees, the open air and the earth.

ARTISTS
Elisabeth Von Samsonow (AUT)
Marielle MacLeman (IRL)
Ruth Le Gear (IRL)
Ruby Wallis and Michaële Cutaya (IRL)
Michelle Doyle (IRL)
Liliane Puthod (FRA)
Naïmé Perrette (FRA)
Sara Sadik (FRA)

The film will premier online for a limited duration via tulca.ie from 9pm GMT on Friday 16 April 2021 as part of a weekend of events to celebrate the culmination of TULCA’s UnSelfing programme. To register for the special online screening please visit: www.tulca.ie

Image: Elisabeth Von Samsonow, A Visit, A Ceremony A Gift - production still, 2021

WEATHER GODS

TULCA Festival of Visual Arts and Galway 2020 European Capital of Culture present:

WEATHER GODS - Reprised
Isadora Epstein with Davy Kehoe, Daniel McAuley, Ailbhe Nic Oireachtaigh and Stéfane Béna Hanly
New performance commission
Launch: 17 April 2021

Having been cancelled in 2020 due to a red weather warning, TULCA is pleased to announce the reprise and re-imagining of this specially commissioned work by Isadora Epstein. Weather Gods was originally conceived as a live performance taking place in front of an audience on the Galway to Gort train. This new work is inspired by Iris Murdoch’s concept of unselfing, and its demand that we journey away from ourselves to be attentive to the world, to be curious about the people, places and ideas that surround us. It has now been reimagined as a radio play which will be available to download from the TULCA website from Saturday 17 April. 

Weather Gods is written and performed by Isadora Epstein, who, accompanied by musicians Davy Kehoe, Daniel McAuley and Ailbhe Nic Oireachtaigh and artist Stéfane Béna Hanly created a performance combining a mythological weather report with a train trip out West on the Great Western Railway. With live musical performance from the titular mythical weather gods, and featuring original scores and some familiar favourites, this work is placed somewhere between an art performance and a memorable piece of theatre.

ARTISTS:
Isadora Epstein
Davy Kehoe
Daniel McAuley
Ailbhe Nic Oireachtaigh
Stéfane Béna Hanly

Weather Gods will be live recorded remotely and presented as a podcast, which will be available on 17 April when it will be premiered online as part of a weekend celebrating the culmination of the UnSelfing programme.

Image: Isadora Epstein, 2019

TULCA: XVIII

TULCA Festival of Visual Arts and Galway 2020 European Capital of Culture present:

TULCA: XVIII
Specially commissioned publication
Launch: 18 April 2021

TULCA Festival of Visual Arts first presented a programme in Galway city in November 2002. The intervening 18 years have seen the festival become embedded into cultural life of the city by presenting a new programme every year that is formed and informed by life in the west. TULCA is unique in Ireland as the only platform reserved solely for Irish curators.

TULCA has supported hundreds of artist’s diverse practices and introduced thousands of schoolchildren and adult learners to contemporary art for the first time. Over the years, TULCA has transformed many unwanted or neglected sites into spaces to exhibit and experience high quality, ambitious visual art. 

TULCA: XVIII marks TULCA’s 18th anniversary through a series of new writing commissions, photo-essays and reflections and documents the TULCA UnSelfing Programme for Galway 2020. Featuring contributions from: Áine Philips, Michael Dempsey, George Bolster, Gregory McCartney, Mary Cremin, Matt Packer, Kerry Guinan, Helen Carey, Sarah Browne, Aideen Barry, Louise Manifold, Linda Shevlin, Michelle Browne, Josephine Vahey, Lucy Elvis, Gavin Murphy, James Harrold, Marylin Gaughan-Reddin, Austin Ivers, Susanna Galbraith, Dominic Thorpe, Isadora Epstein, Elisabeth Samsonov, Cliodhna Shaffrey, Sarah Searson and Valerie Connor.

Edited by Michaële Cutaya and designed by Pure Designs, the publication launches on Sunday 18th April and is available for pre-order from the TULCA website on that date. As part of a weekend celebrating the culmination of the UnSelfing programme, TULCA presents an online launch, featuring a panel discussion by TULCA alumni.

To register for this event, visit www.tulca.ie

Image: installation view of TULCA Festival of Visual Arts, Seachange 2015 at Nun's Island Theatre, with Clare Langan’s Floating World, Maria McKinney’s Abyssals and Ruth Lyons’s Afterings. Image Jonathan Sammon

CREATE DANGEROUSLY

TULCA Festival of Visual Arts and Galway 2020 European Capital of Culture present:

CREATE DANGEROUSLY
February - April 2021
Galway City and County

TULCA Festival of Visual Arts and Galway 2020 European Capital of Culture present Create Dangerously an education programme that explores creative thinking and creative making to empower teachers and learners.

Create Dangerously is a new arts education programme designed for school groups and teachers. TULCA has commissioned three Irish artists to create new artworks for the project. Editions of these works will become permanent parts of the Create Dangerously programme which opens to schools nationally after its pilot in Spring 2021.

ARTISTS:
Donal McConnon
Emma Zukovic
Maeve Clancy

SCHOOLS:
Clontuskert NS, Ballinasloe
Cregmore NS, Cregmore
Coláiste Iognáid (The ‘Jes’), Galway

This project is facilitated by TULCA education partner CURO, who focus building thinking skills through philosophical dialogues and creative activities.

Learners will explore the following questions:

• Why do we create?

• What do we create?

• For whom do we create?

Participating teachers will learn to facilitate philosophical conversations in their classrooms, and learners will develop their skills confidence in art making and creative thinking. At the end of the project classes will draft their own ‘creativity manifesto’ which they will present to their partner artist and local community along with an exhibition of some of the artworks produced in response to the artwork they received.

This project presents a unique opportunity for students not only explore new ways of being creative, but to carefully think through why creativity is important and what being creative means to them. It creates a lasting legacy for teachers through active mentoring in the principles that inform the project.

Register your interest: createdangerously@tulca.ie

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For more information and updates see: www.tulca.ie

THREADS | New Writing Commissions

THREADS | New Writing Commissions

Curated by Sarah Searson
The Dock, Carrick-on-Shannon
14 November 2020 - 6 February 2021
 

TULCA Festival of Visual Arts and Galway 2020 European Capital of Culture in association with The Dock presents four new writing commissions for Austins Ivers exhibition THREADS. Four Irish writers, Patrick McCabe, Joanne Laws, Cathy Sweeney and Ian Maleney. 
 
Speaking about the essays, The Dock’s Director Sarah Searson said “Austin Ivers work is highly evocative; it points the viewer towards the social and cultural forces at play in 80’ and 90’s. The opportunity to commission new writing from four contemporary Irish writers enriches the exhibitions ideas and perspectives, bringing you on a literary journey into the themes of Ivers work and this era.” 
 
For this exhibition, Austin Ivers considers some technological developments of the post-war period and their subsequent application in state command and control systems during the Cold War. Utilising video, sculpture and photography, this is a consideration of the relationship between the aesthetic of power and life as experienced under the perpetual threat of nuclear annihilation.

Off the Shoulder of Skibbereen by Patrick McCabe uses science fiction, in particular the film Bladerunner, to consider a variety of references, from Irish society and pop culture of the early 1970s. Looping in Time by Cathy Sweeney looks back at the cultural references around the cold war in the 1980s, specifically the music video for Elton John’s Nikita. Joanne Law’s essay, The Passing of a Shadow examines the posthumous work of three artists, Francesca Woodman, Patrick Jolley and Felix Gonzales Torres. Finally, Ian Maleney writes in Patterns in the Sand about the Manhattan Project, drawing parallels between that time in history and the current interesting times we live in. 

Josephine Vahey, Co-chair of TULCA said “We are really pleased to present these essays to the public in this extraordinary time we are living in, and at a time when lockdown impedes our access to cultural nourishment. We invite everyone, to download and enjoy this new writing by four significant Irish authors.“

All four essays are available to download on thedock.ie and tulca.ie. The exhibition THREADS is scheduled to run at the Dock until 6th February and will reopen pending Government guidelines. 

New Writing Commissions

Patrick McCabe

Joanne Laws

Cathy Sweeney

Ian Maleney

Off The Shoulder of Skibbereen by Patrick McCabe

Patrick McCabe was born in Clones, County Monaghan, Ireland, in 1955. Shortlisted twice for the Man Booker Prize and winner of the Irish Times Fiction Award for The Butcher Boy, his other novels include The Dead School, Breakfast on Pluto, Winterwood and Heartland. He has also written for radio, stage and screen and is a member of Aosdána.

The Passing of a Shadow by Joanne Laws

Joanne Laws is an arts writer, editor and researcher based in County Roscommon. She is Features Editor of The Visual Artists’ News Sheet, where she commissions new writing for an Irish arts readership. Joanne is a member of the International Association of Art Critics (AICA) and a regular contributor to international art publications, including Art Monthly and Frieze. She is Assistant Editor of Protest! - the monograph of Derek Jarman - published in April 2020 by the Irish Museum of Modern Art in partnership with Manchester Art Gallery and Thames & Hudson. She was Arts Writer in Residence at The Dock from 2017 to 2020

Looping in Time by Cathy Sweeney 

Cathy Sweeney is a writer living in Dublin. Her short fiction has been published in The Stinging Fly, The Dublin Review, Egress, Winter Papers, Banshee, The Tangerine and has been broadcast on BBC Radio 4. Her debut short story collection Modern Times will be published by The Stinging Fly and Weidenfeld & Nicolson in 2020. She is at work on a novel

Patterns in The Sand by Ian Maleney

Ian Maleney is a writer based in Dublin. Born and raised in Co. Offaly. His first book, a collection of essays entitled Minor Monuments, was published in 2019 by Tramp Press and shortlisted for the Michel Deon Prize and Butler Literary Award. He received the Arts Council Next Generation Bursary for Literature in 2019. He is the online editor of the Stinging Fly. His work has been published in The Guardian, Esquire, and the New Statesman Winter Papers, gorse, and the Dublin Review. He is the founder of Fallow Media, an interdisciplinary publication for music, photography, and long-form writing.

TULCA 2020 Exhibition Venues

Google Maps
1 - TULCA Festival Gallery, William Street
2 - Galway Arts Centre, 47 Dominick Street Lower
3 - 126 Artist-Run Gallery, 15 St. Brigit’s Place, Woodquay
4 - Engage Art Studios, Churchfields, Salthill Road Lower

Announcement: New dates for TULCA 2020

TULCA Festival of Visual Arts is delighted to announce new dates for the 2020 exhibition programme:

The Law is a White Dog
9 - 18 December 2020
Curated by Sarah Browne

The exhibition programme features 12 artist presentations, 7 of which are new commissions, and 2 artists (Gernot Wieland and Rory Pilgrim) whose work is being shown in Ireland for the first time. Thank you to our partner venues, hardworking volunteers and production team, and the contributing artists for making this rescheduled exhibition possible.

We look forward to welcoming you!

All venues are open 12-6pm daily:

TULCA Festival Gallery
Rossella Biscotti
Rajinder Singh
Julie Morrissy
Gernot Wieland
Forerunner (Tanad Williams and Andreas Kindler von Knobloch)
Anne Tallentire

Galway Arts Centre
Sibyl Montague
AM Baggs
Kevin Mooney
Suzanne Walsh

126 Artist-Run Gallery
Rory Pilgrim
*50 minute film: book here for screenings on the hour*

Engage Art Studios
Saoirse Wall

The safety and health of our visitors and workers is essential. Masks are mandatory in all indoor venues and hand sanitising will be available. Booking is recommended for Rory Pilgrim at 126 Artist-Run Gallery. Other venues will operate a one-way system and limited visitor numbers. Exhibition guides will be available in each venue and online to guide your visit.

(Screening programme to follow in 2021)

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 2020
The Law is a White Dog
Curated by Sarah Browne
Galway, Ireland

www.tulca.ie

Image: Rory Pilgrim, Regenerate Maximum Crisis, Maximum Calm, 2020, oil paint and nail varnish on panel, 15,2 x 20,4 cm, courtesy of andriesse~eyck galerie

Nothing to Look Forward to But the Past | Curated by Gregory McCartney | 1 Dec 2020 - 31 March 2021

TULCA Festival of Visual Arts and Galway 2020 European Capital of Culture are delighted to present:

Nothing to Look Forward to But the Past

Curated by Gregory McCartney
Online Exhibition and Publication
1 December 2020 - 31 March 2021

TULCA Festival of Visual Arts and Galway 2020 European Capital of Culture are delighted to announce Nothing to Look Forward to But the Past curated by Gregory McCartney. This online exhibition and free print publication considers the journey of humanity as a species, and explores an imagined evolutionary path that mixes the animal and human to produce something potentially unknown and new.

The original Nothing to Look Forward to But the Past concept was of course written well before the Covid-19 Pandemic, but it somewhat eerily articulates the sudden change in everyday life and behaviour as well as our sense of being, which the virus has perhaps caused us to reassess. It is also a continuation of the Abridged obsession with actual and metaphorical viruses. Our recent issues have had titles including, Wormwood, Contagion, and Relapse.

Speaking about the project TULCA said: “The Board of TULCA Festival of Visual Arts are delighted to launch Nothing to Look Forward to But the Past online exhibition and publication as part of our UnSelfing Visual Arts programme in collaboration with Galway 2020. This programme has been reimagined and updated to comply with Public Health guidelines. We are delighted to have this opportunity to bring such inspiring artwork and an evocative publication to our audiences in this way.”

Speaking about the project Marilyn Gaughan-Reddan, Head of Programme, Galway 2020 European Capital of Culture 2020 said “The agility and determination of TULCA to reimagine the project, in light of the pandemic is remarkable, and believe that it’s concept and content is more relevant than ever, given the challenges we’re facing in 2020. We are looking forward to the presentation of a memorable exhibition, with incredible artists that global audiences can experience.”

This post lockdown re-imagining of the project sees the exhibition element move online to the www.abridged.zone website. Working with four artists: Stuart Cairns, Nadege Meriau, Daniel Seiffertand Tara Wray, the online exhibition will be accompanied by a series of essays by academics, poets, and writers exploring various aspects of the concept of personal and societal collapse: an attempt to make sense of this recent upheaval in our society and think about how this pandemic will change our journey forward and outlook for the future.

Along with the online exhibition, there will be a publication with a print run of 500. Featuring essays and more, including artworks from the exhibition plus poetry from Charlie Baylis, Peter Boyle A time of endings, Moyra Donaldson, Colin Dardis The Year of Non-Resistance, Keshia Starrett, Liam Bates, Aisling Bradley, Clare McCotter, Susannah Dickey, Yvonne Blomer, Lydia Unsworth, Soso fragments, Stephanie Burt, Stuart Cairns, Adam Crothers, Maria Finch, Jess Mc Kinney, Sharon Young, Dylan Brennan, Maroula Blades An Ancestor Guards, Anna D’Alton, Eva Griffin plus fiction from Maeve O’Lynn all responding to the Nothing To Look Forward To The Past theme.

Copies of the Print Edition will (Covid restrictions permitting) be available in Galway, Derry and Belfast plus a limited amount from Abridged.

Artists
Stuart Cairns is a Belfast-based artist who works with natural materials and found objects picked up on his ‘wanderings’. Working as a silversmith, Cairns combines these natural materials and found objects alongside precious metals to create artefacts in the tradition of tableware and domestic objects. Here he presents Hinterlands, influenced by his journeys around his local coastal area.

Nadege Meriau, a French, London based artist whose experimental practice is principally photographic, but encompasses sculptural installations and video work. Best known for her use of organic matter - bread, chicken carcasses, honeycomb - her visceral and sensuous imagery both seduces and disorientates. Spaces are ambiguous and scale is distorted. For each piece Mériau exercises both control and restraint, manipulating and coaxing her materials into certain behaviours or forms, whilst simultaneously allowing nature to take its course. For this project she presents In These Times, They Who Eat My Flesh and The Fall.

Tara Wray is a photographer, curator, and filmmaker. Her work is autobiographical in nature and focuses on issues of mental health and the ambivalence of family ties. And dogs. She makes art to understand the world around her and to define her place within it. Her sold out photobook, Too Tired for Sunshine, was published by Yoffy Press in 2018. Recently she founded the Too Tired Project, a non-profit photo initiative helping those struggling with depression by offering a platform for collective creative expression and community. We present Everything All The Time Never Enough, a beautifully abstract look at our contemporary existence.

Daniel Seiffert, influenced by his political studies, tends to document the true and the real in his photographs. Many journeys prior to and during his artistic career also influenced his worldview and strengthened his desire to preserve time and space. In Raufaser he wants to raise awareness of how the aftermath of war and crisis can affect the generations that follow and examine how collective and individual memory is shaped and influenced. He is creating a new sense of identity by confronting his relationship with the past, spanning four generations, providing the basis for a detailed investigation of post-memory, mental health, war and history.

About UnSelfing
In 2020, TULCA Festival of Visual Arts has created a special programme of visual arts events for the occasion of Galway 2020 European Capital of Culture 2020. This programme is called ‘UnSelfing’. Taking the theme of Journeys, both exterior and interior, ‘Unselfing’ refers to the idea of going outside of oneself in order to find truth. The writer Iris Murdoch, who was born in Ireland in 1919, contributed much to the field of philosophy, including the idea of ‘unselfing’, or, to turn one’s attention outward, away from the self and into the world and nature in order to see things as they really are rather than from a self-centred perspective. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, many of the events, exhibitions, and commissions for UnSelfing have been changed and adapted to comply with public health advice. A programme of upcoming events is available at www.tulca.ie and www.galway2020.ie

About Galway 2020 European Capital of Culture
Galway is European Capital of Culture in 2020. Due to the impact of Covid-19 the cultural programme has been reimagined, with local and national artists and cultural organisations that won Galway the European Capital of Culture designation remaining at its core. The ambitious programme comprises both digital and live events which take place across the villages, towns, islands and the city of Galway and offers theatre, music and sport, to poetry, film, visual art and much more. The reimagined programme will run until the end of March 2021.

Image: Tara Wray, from the Everything All The Time Never Enough series, 2020, courtesy of the artist.

www.tulca.ie