“Mysterious & Fantastic” Programme for Tulca 2007
Co. Galway, Ireland
“Mysterious & Fantastic” Programme for Tulca 2007
Following last year’s hugely successful Tulca which saw Galway city and county play host to renowned local and international artists like Pierre Huyghe and Maggie Madden, the Tulca Season of Visual Art returns boasting a “mysterious and fantastic” programme for 2007. Tulca 2007, which runs from the 9th to the 25th November, is a sprawling series of exhibitions, site-specific work, live-art performances, residencies, discussions & talks. Through its expansive and ambitious programme, TULCA aims to offer opportunities to local, national and international artists and to develop and stimulate the growing visual culture in the city and county. TULCA’s programme comprises of numerous innovative presentations of visual art that work with the city’s structure. It does so through the use of site-specific projects, the establishment of unique off site venues that would not normally work as a gallery space and through time based and interactive events.
Tulca 2007 features over 70 contemporary visual artists from Canada, the United States, Germany, the UK, Iceland, France, Spain and of course Ireland. Founded by Dr. Chris Coughlan, this is the sixth Tulca Season of Visual Art, and is the first under the curatorship of Aideen Barry and Louise Manifold, with curatorial advisors, Cliodhna Shaffrey and Sarah Searson. Áine Phillips curates Tulca Live.
The 1-5 Merchants Road venue (Old McDonaghs building) will form the touchstone for Tulca activities in Galway City. This venue will host City of Strangers, an exhibition of video, painting, photography and installations by Frank Abruzzese, Jo-Anne Balcaen, Felicity Clear, Jennifer Cunningham, Maeve Curtis, Simon Faithful, Anne Ffrench, Mick Fortune, Greaney & Taylor, Athene Greig & Ailsa Lochead, Martin Healy, Michele Horrigan, Jennifer Jacobs, Hye Seung Jung, Johanna Elisia Laitanen, Sagan Lee, Casey Logan, Antonia Low, Sarah O’Brien, Will O’Kane, Naomi Potter, Una Quigley, Sheila Rennick, Scott Rogers, Sandra Vida and Caroline Wright. Corto Circuito, an installation by artist Janet Mullarney addresses metamorphosis, tenderness, purity: men as big as trees transform themselves into lithe birds - their clear voices ringing through the air - unburdened of their role, they become fragile creatures to be nurtured with breadcrumbs during the hard snowbound winter, or to be caressed in the palm of one’s hand when they have a broken wing. Corto Circuito is curated by Ruairi Ó Cuiv. This venue will also play host to the Artist led Archive Public Symposium led by Megs Morley including guest speakers Julie Ault (Editor of Alternative Art New York), Julie Bacon (Researcher & Artist), Brian Kennedy (contributing editor of Circa), Sean Lynch (Visual artist and historian), Julie Crawshaw (co-founder of midwest.org.uk) on Saturday 17th November from 10.30am – 5.30pm. The highly anticipated talk by Warren Neidich: Resistance is Futile / Resistance is Fertile. (How art can change the brain and mind), will take place on Saturday 10th November at 2pm. Bracketing this loaded programme at this venue is the Official Tulca 2007 Opening: 8pm Friday 9th November and the City of Strangers Party with Queen Kong: 10pm Saturday 24th November.
The second base of activities is the House Hotel at Spanish Parade. The House Hotel has kindly invited Tulca to guest at their city centre venue. The Tulca House Warming Party which will take place on the 9th November at 10pm will kick off an exciting week of screenings, forums and festival club shenanigans. Vivienne Dick: Film Screenings will take place on Thursday 22nd November, at 8pm. The Tulca Brunch with George Bolster, Sally Timmons, Naomi Potter & Jackie Sumell will take place on Saturday 10th November at 11.30am.The Tulca Festival Club will happen each Friday, Saturday and Sunday night in The House Hotel from 10pm, with the Tulca Closing Party at 9pm Sunday 25th November sending Tulca 2007 off in style.
Spiralling outward from these centres of activity and information are twelve other venues around Galway City and County including The Pink Cottage: No. 9 Henry Street, Galway City Museum: Spanish Arch, Galway University Hospital, Ard Bia: 4 William St. West, G126: Ballybane Industrial Estate, Artspace; Liosban, Galway Arts Centre: 47 Dominick Street, The Whiteroom Gallery: Liosban, the Town Hall Theatre Gallery,: Courthouse Square, Aras Eanna: Inis Oirr, Nuns Island Studio and NUIG.
The Pink Cottage, 9 Henry Street, will house the work of seven artists, Katya Bonnenfant, Aoife Cassidy, Ceara Conway, Stacy Makishi, Paula Naughton, Dr. Ron and Grupat, and will be the launch site for Deirdre O’Mahoney’s Publication. The Galway City Museum will be a hub of focused creativity housing artist Eleana Banjo on residency and work by artists Sagan Lee and Gareth Polmeer. Opening at 5pm on Friday 9th November, Irish artist Damian Magee will exhibit a series of new paintings at Galway University Hospital. Ard Bia Gallery’s programme of events, including and exhibition by Tim Sulllivan, will be launched at 4 William St. West on Friday 9th November at 6pm. An exhibition of work by Catalyst artists (Belfast) will open at 7pm on Saturday 10th November at G126, Ballybane Industrial Estate. Galway Arts Centre will house the Artist Led Archive and the collaborative exhibition “Infinite at Both Ends” by Peter Morgan and Judy Kravis, curated by Megs Morley. The official launch of both will take place on Friday 16th November at 6pm. Artspace in Liosban will house a series of events called ‘The Process Room’ during Tulca. Artist Jo-Anne Balcaen will be in residence in Artspace from 7th – 14th November. Jo-Anne Balcaen will also give a talk on artist run art centres in Canada and Naomi Potter will give a talk on the Banff Centre, Canada at 7pm Tuesday 13th November. The Whiteroom Gallery will play host to an exhibition of work by the winner of the Royal Hibernian Academy Axa Insurance prize for drawing in 2007, Patricia Lambert. This will officially open at 7pm on Friday 9th November. Sally Batley will be showing an exhibition of new work at the Town Hall Theatre Gallery for the duration of Tulca.
This year sees Tulca expand throughout the city and further a field in a surprising menagerie of ways. Artist Connor McGarrigle has created the Tulca Freedom Trail, an audio tour of Galway that allows visitors and natives alike to experience Galway anew. For more information, visit 1-5 Merchant’s Road or www.tulcafreedomtrail.com. Artist Gareth Polmeer’s Project, “This Could Be Anywhere”, also interacts and collaborates with the Galway Public. Polmeer, who has never been to Galway, will create work based on feedback he receives from people in Galway who choose to email him through thiscouldbeanywhere@tulca.ie. The public are invited to contact him with their experiences of Galway. Work by Irish artist Alice Maher will “inhabit” the Spanish Arch in Galway City Centre for the duration of Tulca. Not one to be missed, Maher’s work will leave the traditional white cube behind. Following on from her spectacular exhibition ‘The Night Garden’ in the RHA Dublin, Maher’s drawings have been especially developed to be projected on the old wall of Galway, Spanish Arch. Joan Healy presents another site-specific work with her “Virtual Busker” project. The public will encounter Healy’s interactive work in the traditional manner, cap in hand. German artist Warren Neidich’s work will trail Galway City inhabiting the manner reserved usually for advertising. Niedich’s work will insist that the passer-by looks twice. The Critical Helpline by artist Doireann Ni Ghroighair will also go live during Tulca. Arts professionals will man a specifically appointed helpline for artists on Saturday 10th November. Visual Art publication the Fold, which will be available in 1-5 Merchant’s Road, further experiments with the escape from the White Cube, thus stretching the parameters of what can be understood as a contemporary Visual Art exhibition space. For their third issue, Fold creators Alison Pilkington and Cora Cummins have focused on content specifically related to Tulca and its inherent themes.
TulcaLive, the live and performance art element of Tulca is curated by Áine Phillips and is now in its third year. Autobiography is the theme linking the diverse live works presented for this year’s TulcaLive. Based at Nuns Island Studio, Tulcalive opens on the 10th of November 2007 with Francoise Berlanger’s “UR” and closes with the two-day TulcaLive performance event showcasing the work of 12 artists over the last weekend of November the 24th and 25th. In between, a series of performative videos by 8 Irish and international artists will be screened. The artists, who have come to Galway from the United States, Europe and throughout Ireland, re-present and re-create aspects of lived experience using performance and video as language and expression of each artist’s unique aesthetic. Life narratives are told and the artists’ self revealed in these live artworks, using personal and singular experience to speak about the mutual, the universal and the political.
In performance, their voices and visual forms explore the personal experiences of death (Victoria McCormack), intimacy (Sam Rose), assault and rape (Jana Leo), vulnerability and the exposure of self (Anna McLaughlin and Michelle Browne), motherhood (Lisa-Marie Johnson), habitation (Kevin Flanagan) and the limits of the body (Aileen Lambert). Artist in Residence Michael Mayhew, based at NUIG evokes vanished people in a serial and epic work on loss and relationship. Nigel Rolfe performs his signature works ‘from the personal to the political’ and Francoise Berlanger’s theatre shows us the origins of her birth in North Africa. In the video programme, artists perform themselves - the video acting as a performance document (Rajni Shah) or re-perform special moments from life (Katharine Lamb). Other identities are projected onto Sarah Kipp, the body in Nature is explored by Agnes Nedregard and Sarah Browne/Gareth Kennedy. Clodagh Lavelle transforms the body and Kathy Rose re-creates her self poetically. At Galway City Museum, Pernille Spence shows a woman endlessly floating/ falling in a transcendent sky. In keeping with the wider Hospitality theme of Tulca, MART will dispense free art on the streets of Galway.
Residencies feature strongly in Tulca 2007, drawing on this year’s open theme of Hospitality. Belgian artist Katya Bonnefant is currently on residency on Inis Oirr. Katya’s work is web based and can be accessed through www.tulca.ie. A further three residencies will commence shortly at Artspace, NUIG and the Galway City Museum. Four residency awards will be announced at the Tulca launch. These will include two fro Aras Eanna on Inis Oirr, one in the Burren College of Art, Co. Clare and one for the Cow House Residency in Wexford. Implicit within the concept of hospitality is the suggestion that Galway has the ‘power to host’ and the desire to establish relationships with others/strangers (artists, arts organisations) from here and from elsewhere, thus positioning TULCA as a seedbed for genuine linkages and connections with others. In this way TULCA becomes more of a movement than an exhibition. It is a not a closed, singular event, but rather emerges as a more fluid vehicle for generating and hosting exchanges.
All Tulca events are free. Tulca is supported by the Arts Council, Galway City Council Arts Office, Galway County Council Arts Office, The House Hotel, Ireland West Tourism, Galway, HP, RTE, Douglas Newman Good, VAI & Micro Marketing, Galway. For further info contact the Tulca information point: 1-4 Merchant’s Road / 091 471250 / www.tulca.ie / info@tulca.ie / www.myspace.com/tulca / www.myspace.com/tulcalive
David Walsh
Marketing Assistant