November 2015 TULCA Visual Arts Festival 2015: Seachange at NUI Galway

NUI Galway events and exhibitions at TULCA explores issues of climate change and our place in the changing landscape

The annual festival of visual arts, TULCA, runs this year from November the 13 to 29 November and is curated by Mary Cremin. NUI Galway plays host to a number of events and many staff members from NUI Galway are taking part in the festival.

This year’s festival, entitled Seachange, explores issues of climate change and our place in a changing landscape. Through a combination of the real and the imaginary, the exhibiting artists create a collective call for a sea change, literally, in our current climate policies.

Accompanying the visual art exhibitions and film screenings is a series of talks and discussions entitled ‘Hy-Brasil Dialogues’. These talks will be held in the Aula Maxima at NUI Galway on Saturday 14 and Saturday 28 November, running from 12pm to 5pm. Geographers, geologists, marine researchers, architects, linguists and artists will explore the complexity of our current environment, both locally and globally and from the perspective of geological time, present-time and future projections.

Among the contributors to the ‘Hy-Brasil Dialogues’ are NUI Galway staff members, geologist Dr Alessandra Costanzo, Director of the Geofluids Research Laboratory, geographers Dr Alexandra Revez, Post-Doctoral Researcher with the 3-Cities Project and Dr Eugene Farrell, Lecturer in Geography and writer and sean nós singer Dr Lillis O’Laoire, Senior Lecturer in Irish at NUI Galway.

Dr Lillis O’Laoire also features in ‘Island Sessions: Stories and Songs of Sea and Shore’, a lunchtime event of live performances, being held in the TULCA Festival Gallery at the Connacht Tribune Print Works in Market Street, from 1pm to 3pm on Sunday, 15 November. Folk tales, legends and songscapes of the West coast of Ireland, encompassing magic, transformations, love, loss and pride of place, will be performed by Lillis and local storyteller, Seosamh Ó Guairim.

The James Mitchell Geology Museum in the University is a focal point for this year’s TULCA. The fossils and the specimens exhibited in the museum speak of a geological time that is beyond our comprehension. Artist Barbara Knezevic’s piece, Conglomerations, Constellations, draws on the geological samples from the museum and one of her artworks will be situated within the museum itself.

Full details of the talks are available at: www.tulcafestival.com/festival-2015/events-talks/ Talks are free but booking is essential as places are limited.

Information about all the TULCA exhibitions, screenings and events is available at: www.tulcafestival.com/festival-2015/

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