TULCA Festival of Visual Arts has announced details of its 2023 Open Call, which will be curated by Iarlaith Ni Fheorais under the theme of honey, milk and salt in a seashell before sunrise. The curatorial brief invites artists to consider their own regional relationship to medicine, reflecting on the West of Ireland as a landscape of medical infrastructure and control.

The West of Ireland has been shaped by systems of medicine, from St Brigid’s Mental Health Hospital in Ballinasloe as a symbolic site of institutionalised mental illness, to medical device factories flanking Galway city, Kilcornan, Merlin Park TB hospital, and the Botox factory in Westport. The curatorial brief asks how we can (re)write these knotty legacies into our understanding of nation, modernity, and self, revealing stories about ourselves and where we call home.

The Open Call invites artists 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, or screenings comprising part of the public programme. The final selection of artworks will be based on thematic connection, artistic quality, and feasibility.

The deadline for applications is 19 March 2023 at 5 pm (Irish time), and works must not have been previously exhibited in Galway. TULCA is curated through direct invitation and an Open Call process, and the final selections are made by the curator in consultation with the TULCA producer. The Open Call is available in English, Irish, Easy Read English, and Audio Recording English.

See link below for further details.