TULCA 2024 Open Call

14 March 2024

TULCA Festival of Visual Arts is pleased to announce details of its 2024 Open Call curated by Michele Horrigan; The Salvage Agency.

Curatorial brief:

The 22nd edition of TULCA Festival of Visual Arts will embed itself in multiple venues and locations throughout Galway City and County in November 2024, accompanied by an extensive public programme and publication.

Entitled The Salvage Agency, curator Michele Horrigan welcomes artistic proposals and artwork submissions that consider the agency and role of art in contemporary ecology and environmental study, and those that examine the underlying attitudes that have led to today’s critical and urgent impasse.

Galway, on the edge of the northeast Atlantic, is a unique location for a heightened awareness of what is at stake, and why? Explorations of landscape, seascape and nature, public space, colonial history, political structures, the industrial complex and folk narratives are all pertinent. These are paths taken by our collective society in the shaping of today’s world and a contemporary Europe. Can art create an undercurrent of improvisation and frugality, haphazard formality, and change to offer new perspectives, provocations and empathy? From the wreckage, can art nourish a new reality?

Application:

Artists are invited to propose the presentation of existing artworks, or the production of new work. Works can be proposed for exhibition in the festival, or as one-off performances / events / workshops / screenings comprising part of the public programme. Work must not have been previously exhibited in Galway.

Send a single PDF attachment (15MB max) that includes the following:

• A concise artist’s statement that tells us about your work and how it might connect or respond to the letter above (250 words max)

• CV (2 pages max)

• Examples of previous work:
  Up to 10 images (must include title; the material / medium; the dimensions / duration; the date of production, and also information on where the work has been shown, if applicable)

Up to 2 web links to video / sound works can be sent (YouTube or Vimeo, extracts should be no longer than 10 minutes. If works are sent in full please suggest a 10-minute excerpt to watch). Include passwords for any private videos.

• A clearly outlined proposal of work to be exhibited, including detail about its installation, technical and accessibility requirements (250 words + 3 photos max).

• Optional: If this is a proposal for new work, please also include any available visualisations, information on materials, costings, technical and venue requirements (additional 250 words max).

Deadline: 28 March 2024, 5pm

Find out more here.

Applications should be submitted via email to opencall@tulca.ie

Image: Glass model of a blue sea dragon by Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka, circa 1880. Courtesy of the Zoology and Marine Biology Museum, University of Galway.