Matt Packer in conversation with Jim Ricks. JR: Ok, just to kick things off… Derry seems to have a combination of street cred and access to the UK and for a city its size it does appear to have remarkable resources, but is there a scene and is it something that can organically grow? And finally, what effect will Brexit have on Derry as an art place? MP: You’re asking a bungle of different questions there. Derry has a remarkable history, which in turn gives… Read More »
REVIEW: TULCA 2012
The 2012 Tulca: Season of Visual Art was the tenth anniversary of Galway’s 2 week, multi-location event. Always in mid November, it utilises existing arts infrastructure and activates a variety of disused ‘slack spaces’ or rather vacant buildings and shops. This year was no different as the exhibitions bring “together 41 artists over 10 locations.” I had lived in the west of Ireland for about 6 years and know the festival somewhat intimately. I exhibited in 2006, the year Cliodhna Shaffrey and Sarah… Read More »
Review: i-podism: Cultural Promiscuity in the Age of Consumption – Tulca 2008
TULCA, Galway’s annual visual arts festival, usually a time of great excitement in the shortening days of November, was an occasion for disappointment in 2008. The curatorial decisions were bold, but fundamentally conservative, despite a few interesting choices. Still from Jun Nguyen Hatshushiba’s video Memorial Project Nha Trang, Vietnam: Towards the Complex I had initially assumed that TULCA was a critique of I-Podism (i.e. the super-saturation of images, videos, and music via such technologies as the I-Pod in a period of globalalised capitalism). According… Read More »