Veruca Salt

Ten artists bring together work across film, photography, sculpture, painting and installation, shaped by independence, experimentation and refusal of prescribed roles. About Marking fifty years since punk emerged as a disruptive cultural force, the 24th edition of TULCA Festival of Visual Arts, entitled Veruca Salt, considers what it means to know who you are and know what you want. Curated by Sinéad Keogh, Veruca Salt approaches punk not as a fixed historical style, but as a living method: a way of working outside conventional structures, questioning received values, and making space through DIY culture, collective action and self-determination. The programme brings together artists, filmmakers, writers, musicians and community organisations whose work is shaped by independence, experimentation and a refusal to accept prescribed roles. Women-led and countercultural perspectives run throughout the festival. Historical and archival strands connect the first wave of punk and Irish alternative culture with contemporary practices that address gender, identity, sexuality, bodily autonomy, domestic power, disability and political expression. Rather than treating rebellion as an aesthetic in itself, Veruca Salt asks what punk's insistence on agency, solidarity and reinvention can offer in the present. Across five galleries and a wider programme of events in Galway, the festival includes exhibitions, film screenings, live performance, sound, writing, artist talks, workshops and community-led projects. Established and emerging practitioners are presented alongside local organisations and collaborators, creating connections between individual artistic practices and collective experience. Veruca Salt is a programme about conviction: the decision to speak, make, organise and define oneself on one's own terms. It positions art as a space for refusal and disruption, but also for care, recognition and the creation of new forms of belonging. TULCA 2026: Veruca Salt will be presented in multiple venues and locations throughout Galway city and county from 6-22 November 2026. TULCA Festival of Visual Arts is supported by The Arts Council, Galway City Council and Galway County Council. See www.tulca.ie for full programme, including exhibitions, film screenings, live performance, sound, writing, artist talks, workshops and community-led projects. Read more Toggle Sculpture Film / Video Installation Photography Painting