TULCA Festival of Visual Arts is pleased to announce that the 13th edition in 2015 will be curated by Mary Cremin, independent curator. This announcement also marks the Open Call for artists submissions to TULCA 2015
TULCA 2015 in collaboration with Galway University Hospital Arts Trust are also inviting applications to respond to one of the below areas. The proposal can take the form of an artwork, workshop or a site-specific project; the proposal should be connected to the overall thematic of the exhibition.
– Architecture and design in health settings
– Creative Aging
HOW TO APPLY?
Deadline: July 5th 2015
We will acknowledge the receipt of all applications. Artists will be notified by August 5th. We regret we are not able to give individual feedback for unsuccessful applications.
Applications should be submitted via email opencall2015@tulcafestival.com. For any further queries please contact Festival Producer at info@tulcafestival.com
1. A concise artist’s statement * (100/200 words)
2. CV *
3. Examples of previous work (no more than 10 images or a PDF portfolio).
* Each image of existing work must include the title, its dimensions, the material/medium, the date and your name. No more than 2 videos can be submitted and are to be sent as links to YouTube, Vimeo etc.
* Items 1 – 3 are obligatory
4. (Optional) Where new work is being proposed please include a clear outline text not to exceed 300 words. For any proposed new work, please include as much detail as possible at this stage, as to its scale and production. All sketches/ proposals for new work should be emailed as PDF document.
THERE IS NO SUBMISSION FEE
The organisers reserve the right to photograph works and to use elements of accepted entries for exhibition for publicity purposes, unless the artist expressly states the contrary in writing. Copyright of all work is the property of the artist. Work is accepted for exhibition on merit.
WHAT DO WE OFFER?
TULCA is a unique festival that provides the opportunity for artists to engage with a wide audience in new and unusual ways. As well as artist fee, we offer curatorial and artistic development, technical support and a significant press, marketing and audience campaign. A fully illustrated catalogue with commissioned essays. A dynamic programme of education within primary and secondary schools and third level institutions. The festival also offers an extraordinary chance to build new collaborations and extend your network with artists nationally and internationally.
Artists are welcome to propose the presentation of existing works or the production of new work. Work must not have been previously exhibited in Galway.
Artists curated through this open call are responsible for the transport/delivery and collection of their work.
A combination of art and non-art venues, including Galway University Hospital, 126 Artist-Led Gallery, Galway Arts Centre, Nuns Island Theatre etc will be used to house parts of the exhibition. Works for these contexts will be selected accordingly.
Mary Cremin is a writer, art historian and independent curator based in Dublin. Cremin graduated from University College Cork with B.A. in History of Art and Political Geography (2004) and graduated with a Masters in Visual Art Practice (curating) from the Institute of Art, Design and Technology, Dublin in 2007.
Recent curatorial projects include Aether, Martin Healy at Oonagh Young Gallery, Dublin (2014), Misadventure Seeks Rainy Afternoon: Sonia Shiel, Oonagh Young Gallery (2013/2014), Bring in the Noise, Ormston House & Limerick City Gallery (2013), Lights, Camera, Action!, Temple Bar Gallery & Studios (2012), Pilgrimage from Scattered Points: Luke Fowler, Temple Bar Gallery & Studios (2011), Sidney Nolan; Ned Kelly Series, IMMMA (2012-2013), Garrett Phelan, IMMA off site NEW FAITH LOVELSONG (2012), Conversations: Photography from the Bank of America Collection IMMA, (2012), Cyprien Gaillard & Koudlam, IMMA (2011). She was Project Manager, Richard Mosse, The Enclave, Irish Pavilion, Venice Biennale, 2013, prior to this she was Project Curator at the Irish Museum of Modern Art. She has produced major exhibitions on Eileen Gray, Lynda Benglis, Francis Alÿs, Carlos Garaicoa, Romuald Hazoumè, Gerard Byrne, and Alice Maher.
Cremin was awarded the curatorial residency in Temple Bar Gallery & Studios, Dublin for 2010/2011, the visual arts curator residency, 2013 from the Irish Arts Council.
In 2015, she will curate a performance series at IMMA as part of the Summer Rising and will participate in 1+1, at Platform, Vaasa, Finland. She is the curator of Dublin City University art collection.
TULCA Festival of Visual Arts 2015 curator, Mary Cremin outlines her aspirations for the programme:
The launching point for TULCA Festival 2015 is the legendary island Hy-Brasil; noted on maps as early as 1325, when Genoese cartographer Dalorto placed the island off the west coast of Ireland. Mythologised over time through oral history and written accounts, it was thought to emerge from the fog every seven years and was inhabited by a highly advanced society. It appears southwest of Galway Bay on successive sailing charts up to 1865, from that time it was omitted, as its location could not be verified.
Similarly, the legendary island of Atlantis was inhabited by a utopian society and thought to hold the wisdom that could bring world peace. This legend has its origins in 330 B.C when the story was first recounted in two of Plato’s dialogues, the “Timaeus” and the “Critias”. Atlantis was thought to preserve the earliest records of the world’s creation; in the absence of a real history, myth takes over.
There are different hypotheses on the existence of these islands, and the debate continues as to whether they are fact or fiction. Atlantis is thought to be underwater, overwhelmed by the great flood while a raised bank off the Atlantic coast is thought to mark the site of the sunken island Hy-Brasil. This concept of the mythical island is prevalent in numerous countries throughout the world for example ‘Lemuria’, in the Indian Ocean or the lost city of ‘Ys’ in Brittany, which is re-counted as been swallowed by the ocean. The association of these islands with ideological pursuits, myth and fiction and how the changing landscape of our environment relates to our current concerns about climate change is the conceptual framework for the exhibition.
Extreme weather events are commonplace and we are overly familiar with images of mass destruction on our screens. We might conclude that the cataclysmic effects of our western lifestyle are now been turned on us. As sea levels rise, been an island we are more vulnerable to these changes. Geo- engineers refer to the ‘blue ocean event’, a point when the sun can penetrate the artic waters, accelerating the change in ocean currents and atmospheric circulations leading to rapid sea level rising and climate chaos.
Climate change is occurring in a highly unequal world and contributes to further inequality as responsibility for carbon emissions is divided within and between countries exposing geography of vulnerability. Current policies of free trade and resource privatizations allows for the proliferation of market environmentalism. In order to change this, we need to move from the current neo-classical economic system to one of ecological economics, which focuses on sustainability, nature, justice and shared values.
The exhibition will take a closer look at the issues of climate change and our future relationship with the changing landscape while also examining the language surrounding future projections that are more a kin to works of science fiction than empirical truth. The blurred lines between fact and fiction has never felt so prevalent, they are the subjects of science fiction and dystopian novels such JG Ballard, ‘The Drowned World’, or Yevgeny Zamyatin’s, ‘We’. As Marc Augé states ‘Everything is happening, as though the future could no longer be imagined except as the memory of a disaster which we only have a foreboding of right now’.
We have entered an epoch of the anthropocene where human activities have had a significant global impact on the earth’s ecosystem. Climate change offers huge challenges to our societies and is a major test of our capacity for collaboration, imagination and resourcefulness. This exhibition is designed to take place ahead of the UN Climate Change Conference in Paris (November 30 and December 11, 2015). The exhibition will create a platform for the artistic and wider community to promote the ongoing dialogue and illustrate imaginative responses to the historical backdrop surrounding this debate plus future possibilities.
To coincide with the exhibition there will be a programme titled Hy-brasil Dialogues, a series of talks and discussions around climate change, archaeology, ecology, architecture with invited artists, writers, archaeologists, architects and geographers.
Proposals are invited from individual artists or groups that respond to the curatorial brief and context of the exhibition. All media and scale of proposals are welcome for submission.