A range of artworks are currently being presented in Galway city as part of the TULCA Festival of Visual Arts.
TULCA opened its doors in the An Post Festival Gallery and Galway Arts Centre, Engage Art Studios and 126 Artist-Run Gallery in the city and the exhibitions will run until 18th December.
Four of the six ambitious artworks at An Post Festival Gallery are either new commissions for the festival or by international artists who have never presented work in Ireland before.
A key presentation is by Rajinder Singh, titled Border Tours, a 12-minute audio tour that guides a visitor across a large, vinyl floormap.
This floormap, approximately 4m x 6m, represents the living space of a family living in a Direct Provision Centre in the Galway region.
Gernot Wieland’s 12-minute film, Ink in Milk, is projected on the back of a classroom wardrobe.
In the film, Wieland recounts darkly humourous stories that involve boyhood trauma, visits to a friend at a psychiatric institution and meetings with animals, recounted through childlike drawings, maps, plasticine animations and super 8 footage.
Amongst other threads, the narrator (Wieland, with his Austrian-accented English) recounts a village population’s growing fixation of forming crystal-like structures with their bodies: they lay down their tools to imitate crystals for days on end, hoping to empathetically alleviate fear, sorrow, agony and mourning. His voice suggests, ‘How we place our bodies in relation to each other is the start of politics.’
Julie Morrissy’s poem, Positions Gendered Male in Bunreacht na hÉireann / 1937 Constitution of Ireland, surrounds visitors as they walk through the gallery.
In the poem, Morrissy (a poet who also has legal training), points to the different status and attention paid to men and women in the Irish Constitution.
Other artworks include a new sculpture by Forerunner, funded by Galway County Council, a video by Anne Tallentire and a sculpture by Rossella Biscotti. The book produced to accompany the exhibition is also available for sale in the gallery.
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.
All venues are open 12 pm – 6 pm each day.
