Visual Art: Bridget O’Gorman’s ‘Support | Work’ as part of TULCA Festival of Visual Arts 2023

Critically-acclaimed artist and writer Bridget O’Gorman will be presenting her eagerly anticipated new work at the 2023 TULCA Festival of Visual Arts.

Her exhibition Support | Work, comprising of sculptures and text, seeks to illuminate what the disabled experience might tell us about access and support, and to reflect upon what shared support means for artists.

Support | Work will be open to the public at TULCA Gallery and also online at www.tulca.ie 3 rd – 19 th November.

The Support | Work installation will form an ecosystem of balance and precariousness reflecting on what it means to support and be supported and ultimately how we affect one another. The sculptures will be large-scale ‘mobiles’: reflecting upon ideas of support and equilibrium, and created using found and fabricated media, using pulleys, parts from mobility aids, and hoists. The sculptures will be informed by support and access, but will also be produced through access, working with a support worker.

Bridget O’Gorman says, “As a newly disabled artist I will be working with a support worker for the first time as part of my practice. This is one expression of the many formal and informal collaborators in an artists practice. Collective support is integral to how artists operate. Support | Work will open this process out to the public, to consider the multiple meanings, conversations, and mutual exchanges inherent to support that are necessary to creative practice yet so often overlooked. As a disabled artist, I will draw on personal and intersectional insights to create a space of collective reimagining, exploring how we might deepen our understanding of support.”

This year’s TULCA festival, curated by Iarlaith Ní Fheorais, takes its title from the description of an Irish folk cure, honey, milk and salt in a seashell before sunrise, and is creating spaces to sit with artworks about disability, medicine, and home. The 2023 festival responds to the evolving experience of disability and medicine in the West of Ireland, and the legacy of institutions such as St Brigid’s Mental Health Hospital and how ideas of health and treatment can shape landscapes and communities.

Festival curator Iarlaith Ní Fheorais says, “We are delighted to show this exciting new commission by Bridget O’Gorman with the support of Arts and Disability Ireland. Support | Work is urgent sculptural work that reflects the seen and unseen labour and voices that goes into making art. In the way it is made collaboratively with a support worker and the materials used, it is a vital expression of the web of connections that are necessary to art making, especially for disabled artists.”

Support | Work is funded by the Arts Council’s Arts and Disability Connect scheme managed by Arts & Disability Ireland. For more information on this funding scheme, please see: https://adiarts.ie/artists/funding/connect.

Support | Work has also been supported by The Arts Council of Ireland Project Award 2023, TULCA Festival of Visual Arts and field:arts.

EXHIBITION DETAILS
Dates: Friday 3 rd -Sunday 19 th November

Exhibition available online at: https://www.tulca.ie/

Festival accessibility: All film works will be captioned, and all talks and performances will be live captioned. There will be audio description tours available, with a number of films with audio described versions. Transcriptions will be available for sound works. There will be a relaxed and masked opening on November 3 rd and a COVID safe and accessible social event as part of the
public programme. There will be benches available in all venues. Please check out www.tulca.ie for full details of the programme and to find access statements.