Event
These Tangled Threads is an exhibition by Toma McCullim on view in the Tower Stairwell of Uillinn: West Cork Arts Centre from 25 July until 14 August. The exhibition is the culmination of a 10 week residency in Uillinn: West Cork Arts Centre. Toma is picturing dementia; endeavouring to translate, in the turns and twists, how it is to think through this different narrative structure, bringing into focus how examining our own way of thinking can help us to reconnect with people who we have stopped understanding. Toma will also be sharing poems created as companion pieces to this work.
“I am an artist working on the Art for Health Partnership Programme, West Cork. This means I am often making art work with people who are experiencing cognitive changes. I am also an anthropologist of art. I am interested in what art does. When I am making art I am thinking about thinking. When we make visual an idea, we communicate in the grammar of dreams. We sort these picture ideas into concepts which frame how we see our world. Bringing you here to the strange world of the concrete stairwell, we step into absence. We feel our disconnection from everything that tells us who and where we are. Imagine that the sum of these parts is all you know. Then think again.”
Toma McCullim holds a Masters in Arts Process from the Crawford Collage of Art and Design. She was also awarded a 1st Class honours degree in World Art and Museology – Anthropology, Archaeology and History of Art – from the University of East Anglia. She has exhibited her work widely both nationally and internationally. Toma recently received awards from The Arts Council/Create and Cork County Council. Since 2012, she has been an artist facilitator with the Arts for Health team managed by West Cork Arts Centre, working in day care and hospital settings, as well as teaching Arts in Health care FETAC as part of the Arts for Health programme managed Cork Education and Training Board and delivered at the new Uillinn, West Cork Arts Centre. As part of her collaborative practice, Toma also facilitates on the Discovery Programme with Arts and Mental Health Services, West Cork.
