TULCA 2026: Open Call

TULCA 2026: Open Call

TULCA Festival of Visual Arts is pleased to announce the Open Call for the 2026 festival, curated by Sinéad Keogh.

2026 marks fifty years since the inception of Punk as we know it. A movement sparked from a need for change, born of the underground, Punk would go on to alter culture and society forever. An ideology of reform gave people a choice to say “no”, to push back, and to adopt a DIY approach. These acts of rebellion became a catalyst for more progressive modes of expression, opening the doors for new diverse approaches to music, art, and a command for equitability more expansively.

The 24th edition of TULCA Festival of Visual Arts, entitled Veruca Salt, considers what it means to know who you are and know what you want. The selected artists and community partners engage with practices that operate at the  periphery of the mainstream, dismantle gender roles, and challenge dominant  norms within an ambitious and inclusive programme. Veruca Salt is a punk and women-led proposition that seeks to disrupt through transgressive agency and a strong sense of conviction.

“I want a party with roomfuls of laughter
Ten thousand tons of ice cream
And if I don't get the things I am after
I'm going to scream!”

TULCA Festival of Visual Arts invites proposals from artists working in any medium. For the 2026 edition, there is a particular focus on artists based in the West of Ireland. Proposals may include new commissions or existing works that respond to the themes of Veruca Salt. Submissions that engage with the ethos of Punk, as well as the ecological and cultural landscape of the West of Ireland, are especially encouraged.

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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.

Open Call Process & Guidelines can be found here.

Deadline: 30 April 2026, 5pm

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Image: Rachel Garfield, Art Sex Work: Brixton Hill Punctum, video still, 2022

Announcement: Sinéad Keogh to curate TULCA 2026

Announcement: Sinéad Keogh to curate TULCA 2026

TULCA Festival of Visual Arts is pleased to announce Sinéad Keogh as the curator of the 24th edition of the festival.

Sinéad Keogh is a multimedia performance installation artist and curator with an MFA from the National College of Art and Design in Dublin. Keogh is the founder, director and curator of Soul Noir: Festival of the Dark Arts, a Dublin based festival for the Gothic and alternative arts (2017–2024).

Keogh’s curatorial practice aims to engage audiences with countercultural, underground and alternative voices that are often absent from the mainstream arts scene. Work with artists is approached in a direct and considered manner, alongside expanded programming and community engagement that seeks to broaden access and participation. A strong feminist position is present within this practice, alongside advocacy for artists and audiences who are blind or visually impaired.

Keogh has worked with artists ranging from emerging artists such as Bassam Al-Sabah and Shota Kotake to cult experimental film artist Vivienne Dick to other esteemed, established visual artists such as Alice Maher.

“I am very honoured to be working with TULCA and to be developing a programme that platforms underrepresented communities, women’s groups, and artists working outside of conventional structures. The 2026 edition brings together these practices through a shared ethos of punk and DIY culture, with a focus on collaboration, collective action, and community engagement.”

— Sinéad Keogh, TULCA 2026 Curator

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TULCA 2026: Veruca Salt will run from 6-22 November 2026 across multiple venues in Galway city and county.

TULCA is now accepting submissions for the Open Call. For information on how to apply, and to read a short curatorial statement from Sinéad Keogh, visit the Open Call here.

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TULCA Festival of Visual Arts
Veruca Salt
Curated by Sinéad Keogh
6-22 November 2026
Galway, Ireland

www.tulca.ie

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Photo: Sinéad Keogh

Part Six: Publication | TULCA 2025

Part Six: Publication | TULCA 2025

The final instalment of the TULCA 2025 recap series focuses on the festival publication, Strange lands still bear common ground, produced on the occasion of the 23rd edition of TULCA Festival of Visual Arts and curated by Beulah Ezeugo.

Extending the 2025 programme, the publication brings together new essays, artworks, and contributions by Caroline Mac Cathmhaoil, Francis Jones, Jericho Mars, Hussein Mitha, Enya Moore & Kate O’Shea, PATHOS, and Durre Shahwar.

Featured contributions include:
A Collection of Ocean Waifs — Enya Moore & Kate O’Shea
Construction — Francis Jones
An Ireland of the West — Caroline Mac Cathmhaoil
PATHOS Guiding Principles — Ailbhe McDaid, Julie Morrissy, Leah Smith
Reorientating Borders Into — Durre Shahwar
The Wretched of the City (excerpt) — Hussein Mitha
Imagine for a moment that it is spring — Jericho Mars

Edited by Beulah Ezeugo, with copyediting by Joanne Laws and design by Pure Designs, and published by TULCA Publishing.

Available online and via selected stockists.

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

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Image credit:
Strange lands still bear common ground publication. Photo: Mary McGraw

Part Five: Artist Insights | TULCA 2025

Documentation of Public Programme | TULCA 2025

The penultimate instalment of the TULCA 2025 recap series brings together the Artist Insights interviews recorded during the festival. Filmed at the TULCA Gallery in Hynes Building, the short interviews offer insight into the processes, ideas, and contexts shaping the work of participating artists.

Featuring Caroline Mac Cathmhaoil, Caoimhín Gaffney, Mair Hughes and Peter Tresnan, the series reflects on works presented as part of Strange lands still bear common ground, curated by Beulah Ezeugo.

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Artist Insights

Caroline Mac Cathmhaoil

In Mirror States, a two-channel video installation, Caroline Mac Cathmhaoil brings Cuba and Ireland into mirrored reflection. Drawing on archival material and footage filmed between Havana and Dublin, the work traces overlooked political, historical, and symbolic connections between the two islands.

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Caoimhín Gaffney

Caoimhín Gaffney reflects on All at Once Collapsing Together, a photographic series exploring the natural world as a site of healing and recovery. Text fragments shaped by climate anxiety interrupt these landscapes, threading queer perspectives through scenes of fragility, transformation, and environmental uncertainty.

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Mair Hughes

Mair Hughes discusses A Field Guide to the Offa’s Dyke, an installation reflecting on Welsh borderland landscapes and experiences of dual Welsh-English identity. The work explores the psychogeography of the historic dyke while reimagining the borderlands as a space of ambiguity, memory, and creative potential.

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Peter Tresnan

Peter Tresnan discusses The Longest Shadow Ever Cast, a diptych and video installation exploring queer interior worlds through landscape, memory, and gesture. The work forms part of a transatlantic dialogue between Galway and New York, linking two sites through mirrored installations.

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

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Image credits:
Caroline Mac Cathmhaoil, installation view of two-channel video installation Mirror States (2025), TULCA Gallery. Photo: Ros Kavanagh

Video documentation:
Artist Insights interviews: Laura Griffin
Exhibition documentation: Jonathan Sammon

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Part Four: Audio Works & Podcasts | TULCA 2025

Documentation of Public Programme | TULCA 2025

Part Four of the TULCA 2025 recap series brings together audio works, broadcasts, and recorded conversations developed for Strange lands still bear common ground. Alongside newly commissioned collaborations, the programme extended across live radio, installation-based sound, and podcast formats, creating additional spaces for listening and reflection beyond the exhibition galleries.

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Audio Works

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

Specially commissioned for TULCA 2025, 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 reflects on The Wild Goose (1867), a handwritten newspaper created by Irish political prisoners aboard the Hougoumont en route to Walyalup (Fremantle). Drawing together voices from Ireland and Australia, the piece considers how colonial histories have forged complex and under-examined connections between places.

Created across Galway, Walyalup (Fremantle), and Gadigal Country (Sydney).

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Bint Mbareh | Tidal Memory

Commissioned for TULCA 2025 and broadcast live on FLIRT FM (13 November 2025), Tidal Memory unfolded in two parts: a composed audio work followed by an experimental music broadcast.

Bint Mbareh is a sound researcher whose practice explores the parallels between water waves and sound waves, and questions of border dissolution, memory, and Palestinian ways of knowing. Tidal Memory layers sampling, research, and archival references, allowing multiple histories to surface and intersect while interrogating the politics that determine which narratives endure.

Tidal Memory | audio composition
Tidal Memory | experimental music broadcast

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Mair Hughes | A Field Guide to the Offa’s Dyke

A Field Guide to the Offa’s Dyke reflects on growing up in the Welsh borderlands with a dual Welsh-English identity. The audio component accompanies Hughes’ installation, exploring the psychogeography of the dyke alongside speculative reimaginings of the borderlands as spaces of ambiguity and creative potential.

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Podcasts

Emily Joy | Interview

This recorded conversation between artist Emily Joy and curator Beulah Ezeugo took place shortly after Emily’s work arrived in Galway, following delays at customs. In the discussion, Emily reflects on her practice with clay, soil and water, and on the irony that her ceramic salmon sculptures—works concerned with migration and crossing borders—were themselves halted as “hazardous” goods.

The conversation considers borders, Brexit, and movement, while also situating the work within the wider Borderlands / Y Gororau collaboration with Mair Hughes and writer Durre Shahwar.

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RTÉ Culture File | Strange lands still bear common ground

Luke Clancy visited TULCA 2025 for RTÉ lyric fm’s Culture File, walking through the exhibition in conversation with curator Beulah Ezeugo. As they moved through the gallery, they discussed selected works from Strange lands still bear common ground, including the immense quilts by artist Jess Zamora-Turner.

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

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Image credits:
Rubbing of plaque from The Wild Goose memorial, Rockingham, Western Australia. Courtesy of Enya Moore and Kate O’Shea; Image courtesy of Bint Mbareh; Mair Hughes, A Field Guide to the Offa’s Dyke / Canllaw Maes i Glawdd Offa (2025), TULCA Gallery. Photo: Ros Kavanagh; Emily Joy, Mae ffin yn llinell ddotiog sydd ar goll yn yr afon / A border is a dotted line lost in the river (2025). Courtesy of Emily Joy; Jess Zamora-Turner, Postomia (2023), TULCA Gallery. Photo: Ros Kavanagh.

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