Tulca and their logo have this really attractive urban, scratchy, film-reel feel to it. It's a good representation of my Galway winter; nostalgic, foreign and exciting in that urban way and cosy. |
I feel like going to Tulca
is mostly a formality. It's cultural and it's high-brow and I love art
exhibitions and meeting enthusiastic artsy people so much but...I get the sinking feeling that it won't light my artsy fire. That I'll be dissatisfied. Another
cynicism bomb dispells. Mostly because, besides giving in to my basic
artistic tastes, I am always on the look out for two more things when
I peruse a visual arts festival;
1. Public accessibility
2. The triumph of young
local artists over the recession and over Art-World conventions
It would be totally
unreasonable for me to suggest that the creators and instigators of
Tulca didn't think to represent these in their festival. In fact,
they did; I read the curator's piece in their programme. They're doing this whole theme of Landscape this year, which I am all over (as long as it's urban, of course, otherwise it's figurative art all the way). However I
will be mercilessly hawking out the festival for the various
gradients of these two factors, because that's my pathology. And
Tulca is a fairly traditional and publicly funded arts festival and is not going to be nearly as accessible for the public and and
youth-art-innovating as...my...dream arts festival...would be...
I'm approaching this with the gait of a real outsider, who has a measured interest in art and art shows, but is unfamiliar with any of the artists or the conventions in place. But who, all the same, knows what she wants.
Tulca Artists I'm looking
forward to:
- David Helper
For all of the artists I searched whose name did NOT immediately pop up in google with a catalogue of your work; you should be thoroughly ashamed.
All of these artists feature the following tags – cities, decay, technical work, nostalgia. That's my melting pot of art-awesome right there. As beautiful as a Brazilian. As for the other artists in the festival, the descriptions in the lovely free booklet either didn't sway my interest or were far too dense and honestly, I got incredibly bored reading them. I'll let that speak for itself, really. I'll stay open-minded because art is great the way it does that to you and I will report back if I discover an absolute diamond in the rough.
In the artists I've chosen
to get excited about, they feature visual art and photography. Not much
video installation or sculpture.
I gotta say: I'm not big
on video installations. They just don't do it for me. I appreciate
video installations in this very forced and pained way, like I how I
would react to one of our many aging relatives in nursing homes
across England telling a mumbling, long-winded, dithering story that
certainly has a lot of personal and historical importance and wisdom
but invokes no interest in me whatsoever; “Oh, that's nice. That
must have been a challenge at the time. Ooh. Obviously a lot of
effort went into that endeavour. I appreciate your attempt to
communicate with me and probably try and teach me something.” etc.
Of course I have my own
wee gripe and bias about video installations being Versus-with-a-captial-V
public accessibility. Video installations, along with performance
art, serve as those very broad generalisation stamps that immediately give the elitism and hipster-ism labels. This of course isn't fair but, alas, public relations are public relations and artworld
tropes are artworld tropes (can't wait until I can get into researching the meat of this reality, a la Sarah Thornton and her Irish equivalents).
Aideen Barry is an Irish performance artist who is really fucking cool and fantastical, however. She opened the ArtSoc exhibtion in 2010 *smug*. |
I am already itching to do
some gallery-hopping (oh the bliss) and I am also pining a bit for my
amateur Galwegian artists and art admins who are as of yet
undiscovered and un-art-festivaled and who lounge dejectedly in their mouldy semis exhaling pure gaseous
Potential (one of the principal elements on the Artist Periodic
table. Yes I will make an infographic of that) into the atmosphere,
which I bottle and then breathe in surreptitiously at night time
underneath my duvet.
The opening night itself was yesterday, I got some photos on the old camera phone, and had lots of wine like I had hoped.
Two pieces in particular stood out at the opening reception:
This is just mad. |
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