TULCA Education shares the public outcomes of its 2020 programme

TULCA Education Programme 2020 (extended)

TULCA Festival of Visual Arts is delighted to share the online educational resources and activities with parents, teachers and students of its extended 2020 Education Programme.

TULCA is a festival celebrating contemporary visual art, that takes place annually in November across Galway City and County. The Law is a White Dog, curated by Sarah Browne, was the title of the 18th edition and featured work by 23 artistic contributors across 4 exhibition venues together with screenings, workshops and performance events. The Education Programme has been reimagined to allow us to deliver it to you safely online.

TULCA's most recent festival, The Law is a White Dog, reflects on the implications of past and current legal systems and how they influence our thinking and attitude. In particular it looks at how work made by artists responds to categorisation and labelling in society and how this work can challenge us to reconsider any assumptions we made or things we may have accepted without questioning. The work invites us to begin conversations that can make us feel uncomfortable. Societal issues concerning equality, status, power, hierarchy, accessibility, and climate change underpin the work in this year’s festival. Who do we include or exclude when we communicate through language and the spoken word? How do we agree on ownership? Where are our boundaries? Does status give us rights to knowledge? Who decides what is right and just in society? Who is responsible for the care of our planet? All challenging questions that we are asked to consider as we engage with the work in the festival programme.

As always, the TULCA Education Programme welcomes inquiring viewers of all ages to think and talk about visual art together. We aim to encourage people to engage with the artwork, feed their curiosity and view the work online and avail of our education programme videos and activities. All types of conversations are sparked through the shared experience of looking together.

The TULCA Education Programme is a unique programme that focuses on looking at and responding to visual art. It is about reaching out and engaging with schools and the wider community to create an increased awareness and a shared understanding of the visual arts. The programme engages a process of slow looking, reflection and response. Artists probe, question and investigate topics of social concern. TULCA’s Education Programme is designed to continue this process of critical thinking by creating a space for dialogue and learning exchange. It draws on individual personal experience and acknowledges that we all have our own set of visual codes, value systems, likes and dislikes.

Primary Videos and Activity Sheets

Primary school children can access online video content either at home or in their classrooms. Through these videos our Education Team introduce the work by 4 of the exhibiting artists; Rajinder Singh, Kevin Mooney, Rossella Biscotti and Sibyl Montague. Each video has two bespoke activities designed by Education Coordinator Dee Deegan that can be downloaded through the TULCA website. The primary videos are presented by Dee Deegan, Judith Bernhardt and Kate McSharry. Education documentation by Soft Day Media.

These creative and engaging activities include drawing, painting, mapmaking and sculpture. Age recommendations for children appear on each activity sheet. Students are encouraged to share the work made in response to these activities through email or on our social media platforms.

Primary school videos and activity sheets can be accessed here.

Leaving Certificate Art Appreciation Video Tour

Post primary students can access a guided video tour that has been created for students studying art for their Leaving Certificate to help them prepare for the gallery question of the Leaving Certificate Art History and Appreciation Exam. There is a resource pack and worksheet available to download that accompanies this video resource. This video tour and resources were designed by Education Coordinator Dee Deegan who is a qualified second level teacher with excellent knowledge and understanding of curriculum requirements at this level. Education documentation by Soft Day Media.

Leaving Certificate Art Appreciation video, resource pack and worksheet can be accessed here.

Higher Education Resources

We are delighted to be able to share all the public outcomes of TULCA Festival of Visual Arts exhibition and online educational resources of its 2020 festival programme.

Higher education students can access the exhibition online.

• Selected photographic documentation by Ros Kavanagh is available here.

• Three offsite artworks are documented here.

• Video documentation of the entire programme, edited by Jonathan Sammon, can be watched here.

Artist Talks

Presented in partnership with GMIT Centre for Creative Arts and Media.

The Artist Talk Series hosted in association with our partners at the Centre for Creative Arts and Media GMIT is available to watch  online. Featured artist contributors include Vukašin Nedeljković, Sibyl Montague and Saoirse Wall.

• Artist Talk 1: Vukašin Nedeljković
• Artist Talk 2: Sibyl Montague
• Artist Talk 3: Saoirse Wall

Edited, captioned versions of these talks are available here.

Professional Practice

Our education team member Kate McSharry is featured in a ‘Professional Practice’ video developed to aid third level students' understanding of requirements for submission to an exhibition like TULCA. Kate also gives an overview of the festival, the role of the curator, how the work is selected and also shares her own experience of working with TULCA as a volunteer/intern and now as a valued member of the education team. Education documentation by Soft Day Media.

Professional Practice video for emerging artists can be accessed here.

County Schools Projects

Two county Galway schools; Clarinbridge National School and Calasanctius College, participated in our County Schools Project throughout November and December 2020. The project brief was designed by Education Coordinator Dee Deegan and workshop activities were inspired by the themes underpinning the festival. All workshops were delivered virtually. Both of these projects are kindly funded through the Arts Office of Galway County Council.

How Far Can Your Voice Carry?

Writer, poet and dramatist Pete Mullineaux worked with a group of Transition Year students and their teacher Alan Caden of Calasanctius College, Oranmore, Co. Galway to deliver a poetry workshop titled How Far Can Your Voice Carry? Pete facilitated these poetry workshops remotely using Microsoft Teams. The stimulus for the workshops came from the film The Undercurrent by Rory Pilgrim, one of the TULCA festival contributors. Societal issues concerning equality, status, power, hierarchy, accessibility, and climate change feature throughout the work in this year’s festival. The underpinning theme relating to climate change provided the stimulus for this project. Students wrote poems in response to Rory’s film and did audio recordings of the poems to add a performative element to the work.

Words that Change our Ways of Seeing

The title of this County Schools Project that took place in Clarinbridge National School is Words That Change Our Way of Seeing and it focused on the theme of climate change. Writer, poet and dramatist Pete Mullineaux collaborated with visual artist Kim Sharkey to facilitate this poetry/drawing workshop for the sixth class students and their teacher Timmie Glavey of Clarinbridge National School. Pete began the discussion on climate change with students and in particular explored what changes they can make in our lives to help save our planet. Students wrote poems individually and collaboratively based on their interaction and discussions with Pete. Kim then brought the students through two processes; bookmaking and illustrating. Students created their own accordion books and developed ideas for illustrations to accompany their poems. Images of the work will be shared online through the TULCA website.

For more information and updates on the TULCA Education Programme visit: www.tulca.ie/education

TULCA and Galway 2020 launch arts education programme that explores creative thinking

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

TULCA Festival of Visual Arts 
Galway 2020 European Capital of Culture
February - April 2021
Galway City and County

TULCA Festival of Visual Arts and Galway 2020 European Capital of Culture present Create Dangerously; an arts education programme that empowers learners and teachers through exploring creative thinking and creative making using a blend of art and philosophy.

Three Galway schools Clontuskert NS, Ballinasloe, Cregmore NS, Cregmore and Coláiste Iognáid (The ‘Jes’), Galway, have been selected for this stage of the pilot programme. This week each classroom will receive a new art film commissioned by TULCA especially for the project. They will respond to this work through structured dialogues, and art making activities to create their own own ‘creativity manifesto’ and an exhibition that they’ll share with their school community and post online. Editions of these works will become permanent parts of the Create Dangerously programme which opens to schools nationally after this pilot.

TULCA education partner Curo, who designed this project, will facilitate sessions in school and provide CPD to the participating teachers. Students will experiment with creative expression, explore why creativity is important and articulate what being creative means to them. Active mentoring and CPD workshops will empower participating teachers to integrate elements of the project into their teaching practice.

New artworks, A March in March, by Donal McConnon, I Got Power, by Maeve Clancy and My Island by Emma Zukovic will premier in schools this week with participating classes kicking off their creative responses after the Easter holidays.

Artist Maeve Clancy said “This project offers the unusual opportunity to see how a piece of my work is interpreted and presented to children in a school setting. Being able to talk with the teacher and members of Curo as they develop the learning is an absolute treat for an artist. The project is much more far reaching than I originally understood. I’m really delighted to be involved and flattered to be asked to contribute.”

Jo Vahey of TULCA Festival said: "TULCA is thrilled to be piloting Create Dangerously, a project that will enhance the creative lives of young people and one that will make a lasting impact on the schools, teachers and learners it connects with at a time when connection is more important than ever."

Create Dangerously is presented as part of UnSelfing, a programme of visual art created by TULCA for the Galway 2020 European Capital of Culture year. Marilyn Gaughan Reddan, Head of Programme said “We are delighted to be back working in schools and Create Dangerously offers children and teachers a real opportunity for meaningful interactions and engagement with the artist. The TULCA education programme is exceptional and we are really looking forward to the impact that this will have both in the school community and indeed within the overall programme.”

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

More information and updates on the project are available here.

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Donal McConnon (aka T h e C u r l y O r g a n) is a kind of artist/composer/producer who has for one month successfully merged his everyday experiences with record production (4 EPs (2017), who regularly has conversations with strangers through a non-verbal musical binary (Do You Speak Bell? (2018/2019) and has developed an all-encompassing live performance making use of hand-drawn visuals and guided meditations. During Lockdown II, Donal turned his attention to podcast production. Weaving together Whatsapp voice messages from people in his community and the recorded music of local artists, the result was three wholly unique sonic meditations on topics such as Fear and Enlightenment.

Image: Donal McConnon, A March in March, 2021. Still from HD video

Maeve Clancy creates work for children and adults using cut paper, pop up, story and drawings. She has worked on music videos for singer Lisa Hannigan, mounted solo exhibitions and writes both fictional, documentary and historical comics. Past commissions include a pop up book for the Samsung Galaxy Note 3 international advertising campaign, a large scale installation at a National Trust property in Somerset, UK  and a solo exhibition at Corte Eremo, Mantova, Italy. 

She was an invited artist at Dublin WorldCon 2019, a large international science fiction convention and designed 'Sruth na Teanga', an immersive theatre experience as part of  Galway 2020 City of Culture. Recent commissions include a graphic novel about Michael Davitt, a series of animations for Cruinniú na nÓg 2020 shown on RTE and a cut paper installation for An Táin Arts Centre, Dundalk in December 2020. Current ongoing work involves telling the story of Rouba and Noura Merzah, two recent refugees from Syria now living in Ireland.

Image: Maeve Clancy, I Got Power, 2021. Still from animation 

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. 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.

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

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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. 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.

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

Image: Donal McConnon, A March in March, 2021. Still from HD video

TULCA 2021: Open Call

TULCA 2021: Open Call

TULCA Festival of Visual Arts is pleased to announce details of its 2021 Open Call curated by Eoin Dara; there’s nothing here but flesh and bone, there’s nothing more.

A short missive from the curator:

A chara,

I am writing to you from the east coast of Scotland, thinking about the west coast of Ireland — a place I have not been able to visit for quite some time. I have resisted writing this for weeks now, hoping (perhaps naively) that this delay would allow me to speak with some clarity about what a project such as TULCA might look like this Autumn in Galway. I have been worrying about how to state my intentions, how to lay out my table, how best to project an air of assured confidence and authority in this time of unwilling dormancy. The truth is though, in these circumstances, I don’t have a concise curatorial statement to make. My thoughts remain as unfixed as the world around us, and performing some kind of professional fiction here would be deceitful. 

In the winter of 2019 I pitched an embryonic idea to the board at TULCA centring around a question posed within a poem by Ocean Vuong. The question was ‘Don’t we touch each other just to prove we are still here?’

I didn’t know that in a few short months physical intimacy would become an impossibility for so many of us. I didn’t know we would then collectively be entering a year devoid of touch. I shelved this idea for much of 2020, thinking it a little obvious, gauche even, to pursue such a focus after the pandemic. And yet here we are in 2021, still locked within it in a state of slow, unknowing ongoing. Still sheltering in place. Still seeking out new ways to enact intimacy, trying to affirm something like touch through its negation. Still trying to connect, to care, to love, to grieve, and to resist, when all the means of gathering that previously sustained us are (literally) out of reach.

So whilst we remain in this untethered place, far from any space of clarity or assurance, I am writing to say that I am still obsessively thinking about touch. Do we touch each other just to prove we’re still here? In what way? Where is here? Is here enough anymore? What do we want to touch again? What do we want to let go of? These are some of the questions I hope will guide my thinking in the coming months, with the help of other artists, writers and kindred spirits as part of TULCA 2021.

For now, this morning, I’m listening repeatedly to a song by George Michael advocating for casual sex in public spaces (I know you want to but you can’t say yes). I’m misremembering a line from a Jamaica Kincaid essay where she describes a fritillaria flower as smelling like the armpits of all the people you’ve ever loved. I’m thinking of a poem by Caspar Heinemann where he crafts an image of loving arms as ‘a small architecture of warm blood.’

Of course I’m thinking of all these things in an act of longing. I’m writing this hopeful missive from my own empty architecture, towards a place of fullness and imagined excess we might fill together in an inoculated future.

I need to draw this note to a close, as the skin around my thumb and forefinger has started bleeding with bright anxiety. Perhaps I’ll be able to stop this leakage by October. Perhaps not. Perhaps it is a good reminder of what moves through me and allows me to move through.

’til then, in solidarity, and with warm blood, 

Eoin

TULCA 2021 Open Call

TULCA is curated through direct invitation and an Open Call process. The final selection of artworks will be based on thematic connection, artistic quality, and feasibility. Selections are made by the curator in consultation with the TULCA producer.

Full details on the Open Call Process & Guidelines can be found here.


TULCA Festival of Visual Arts
there’s nothing here but flesh and bone,
there’s nothing more
Curated by Eoin Dara
November 2021
Galway, Ireland

www.tulca.ie

Image: Isobel Neviazsky, Two Figures 2021. Graphite on paper. Courtesy the artist.

Announcement: Eoin Dara to curate TULCA 2021

TULCA is pleased to announce Eoin Dara as the curator of the 19th edition of TULCA Festival of Visual Arts in 2021, under the title:

there’s nothing here but flesh and bone, there’s nothing more

Eoin Dara is an Irish curator living on the east coast of Scotland. He works as Head of Exhibitions at Dundee Contemporary Arts and has recently been collaborating with and learning from artists like Margaret Salmon, P. Staff, Emma Talbot and Alberta Whittle and writers like CAConrad, Quinn Latimer, Christina Sharpe and Isabel Waidner.

In previous work at the MAC in Belfast, Dara curated major exhibition projects such as ‘Felix Gonzalez-Torres: This Place’, alongside working on new commissions by artists such as Mariah Garnett, Barbara Knezevic, Kara Walker and Johanna Billing. 

He cites the artists, poets and writers above not to align himself with a particular curatorial position, but to name and honour some of the many co-conspirators who have nurtured his thinking and growth over the past decade.

A former student of the University of Edinburgh, Dara is also an alumnus of the ICI Curatorial Intensive programme. He was a director of Catalyst Arts from 2010–2012, a co-founder of the Household curatorial collective, and is a current trustee of Outburst Queer Arts Festival. He has been part of recent juries and selection committees for Glasgow International, LUX, and the Irish Pavilion at the Venice Biennale.

He teaches and lectures occasionally at institutions such as the University of Dundee and Glasgow School of Art, and has contributed recently to public programmes at Frieze London and the Contemporary Art Society. 

“I’m honoured to have been invited to curate the 19th edition of TULCA this autumn, particularly after watching Sarah Browne’s remarkable 2020 programme unfold from afar. It feels exciting and daunting in equal measure to be thinking towards a project like this in the moment we’re still caught in, when even the very near future seems more ungraspable than ever. 

I’m hoping to move slowly and carefully in the coming months to understand how best we might gather together towards the end of this year, and I’m particularly looking forward to hearing from artists in Ireland through the open call aspect of the festival, at a time when I’m not yet able to physically spend time in the country listening and learning in person.” Eoin Dara, TULCA 2021 Curator

“We are delighted to welcome Eoin Dara as curator of TULCA 2021. We look forward to building upon the resilient model developed in 2020 and working with Eoin to develop the programme for the 19th edition of TULCA Festival of Visual Arts.” David Finn, TULCA Producer

TULCA 2021: there’s nothing here but flesh and bone, there’s nothing more will run in November 2021 across multiple venues in Galway city and county.

TULCA is now accepting submissions for its Open Call. For information on how to apply, and to read a short curatorial statement from Dara, please click here.

TULCA Festival of Visual Arts
there’s nothing here but flesh and bone,
there’s nothing more
Curated by Eoin Dara
November 2021
Galway, Ireland

www.tulca.ie

TULCA shares the public outcomes of its 2020 festival programme

TULCA Festival of Visual Arts
The Law is a White Dog (extended)
6 November - 18 December 2020
Curated by Sarah Browne

TULCA Festival of Visual Arts is delighted to share the public outcomes and online documentation of its 2020 programme, The Law is a White Dog, including a podcast series, a book, exhibition, and a series of online talks and workshops. Contributors (artists, poets, lawyers, activists): AM Baggs, Éric Baudelaire, Rossella Biscotti, Caroline Campbell (Loitering Theatre), Maud Craigie, Máiréad Enright, Forerunner, Michael Holly, Justice for Magdalenes Research, Vukašin Nedeljković, Felispeaks, Charlotte Prodger, Bob Quinn, Sibyl Montague, Kevin Mooney, Julie Morrissy, Rory Pilgrim, Rajinder Singh, Soft Fiction Projects, Anne Tallentire, Saoirse Wall, Eimear Walshe, Suzanne Walsh, Gernot Wieland.

The Law is a White Dog borrowed its title from a book by Colin Dayan, which explores how legal rituals have the power to "make and unmake" persons. Historically, certain categories of person have been invented mainly in order to confine or punish them—the slave, the criminal, the homosexual, the insane—and these categories are further entangled and haunted by classifications based on race. Conceived in the legal imagination in this way, these different classes of person are allocated unequal capacities for reason and for pain, and are distributed different rights to property—whether rights to own one’s own body, or to acquire land. In a west of Ireland context, Dayan’s text offers new ways to recognise persistent legal spectres and zones of exception in the landscape, and to consider the interaction of capital with the institutions of Church and State.

As a curatorial proposal, The Law is a White Dog invited artists to refute categorisation, and to invent new languages and forms of expression in order to develop affinities with others. Responses involve forms of memoir, analysis, mourning, fable, film and song. Again and again, an obstacle occurs: the problem of how sensing bodies, as sources of knowledge, conflict with legal and regulatory logics. How do we know the law, and how does the law know us?

Podcasts

Unfolding throughout a historical global pandemic, where movement is restricted, The Law is a White Dog podcast series transports artworks into remote formats that maintain a sense of contact, intimacy and intensity:

• Episode 1: AM Baggs, In My Language

• Episode 2: Saoirse Wall, The Leaf and the Saviour Guy

• Episode 3: Suzanne Walsh, Lazarus Lingua

• Episode 4: Rory Pilgrim, The Undercurrent

• Episode 5: Gernot Wieland, Depression in Animals

• Episode 6: Eimear Walshe, Fuck Box

• Episode 7: Forerunner, the Future and stuff

• Episode 8: Maud Craigie, Indications of Guilt, pt. 1

• Episode 9: Julie Morrissy, Positions Gendered Male in Bunreacht na hÉireann / 1937

• Constitution of Ireland

• Episode 10: Vukašin Nedeljković, Asylum Archive

The podcast series places artists and artworks in dialogue with legal researchers and practitioners, such as from the Irish Centre for Human Rights and the Centre for Disability Law and Policy, both located at the National University of Ireland, Galway.

Podcasts are available on iTunes, Spotify, Soundcloud and Google. Episode transcripts available here.
The podcast series was produced by Orla Higgins and Sarah Browne.

Book

The Law is a White Dog book features an eclectic range of commissioned writing, original research and artwork. This includes poetry by Julie Morrissy, photography by Rajinder Singh, an illustrated essay by Eimear Walshe, and extracts from two intergenerational feminist projects by Caroline Campbell (Loitering Theatre) and Soft Fiction Projects. Máiréad Enright’s essay explores how the imagery of dogs roams across testimonies of institutional abuse in Ireland, and how survivors insist on forms of repair, accountability and truth-telling that might one day redeem both the law and the state that underwrites it.

The Law is a White Dog book remains available to order here.

Exhibition

A rescheduled exhibition ran from 9 - 18 December 2020 at An Post Gallery, Galway Arts Centre, 126 Artist-Run Gallery and Engage Art Studios.

Selected photographic documentation by Ros Kavanagh is available here.
Three offsite artworks are documented here.
Video documentation of the entire programme, edited by Jonathan Sammon, can be watched here.

Work by Forerunner at An Post Gallery. Photo: Ros Kavanagh. View here

Works by Sibyl Montague and Kevin Mooney at Galway Arts Centre. Photo: Ros Kavanagh. View here

Work by Rory Pilgrim at 126 Artist-Run Gallery. Photo: Soft Day Media. View here

Work by Saoirse Wall at Engage Art Studios. Photo: Ros Kavanagh. View here

Artist Talks

Presented in partnership with GMIT Centre for Creative Arts and Media.

• Talk 1: Vukašin Nedeljković

• Talk 2: Sibyl Montague

• Talk 3: Saoirse Wall

Edited, captioned versions of these talks are available here.

Screening Programme

A screening programme at PÁLÁS Cinema will follow later in 2021.

Maud Craigie, Indications of Guilt. pt 1. 2020. Still from 4k video, 50 minutes

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The Law is a White Dog
Curated by Sarah Browne
6 November - 18 December 2020
Galway, Ireland

TULCA 2020 produced by David Finn

www.tulca.ie