Artist Seán O’Riordan will discuss their upcoming work presented in TULCA 2025: Strange lands still bear common ground.

TULCA is pleased to present the Artist Talks Series as part of the 2025 programme, Strange lands still bear common ground, curated by Beulah Ezeugo. Continuing its ongoing partnership with the ATU School of Design and Creative Arts, TULCA will host four talks throughout October and November 2025.

The series invites audiences to engage directly with artists and the curator, offering insights into their practices and the ideas shaping this year’s festival. All talks take place at ATU Wellpark Road, Galway. Admission is free and open to the public.

Artist Seán O’Riordan will discuss their recent work presented in Strange lands still bear common ground, reflecting on their process, research, and the ideas underpinning their installation for TULCA 2025.

Seán O’Riordan (b. Galway) works across ceramics, woodwork, textiles, writing, and digital processes to explore the politics of desire, value, and the iconographic histories of consumption. Combining architectural and industrial techniques with found materials and ceramic works, O’Riordan encodes perceptions of value through sexuality and non-dominant language, examining how linguistic, material, and affective economies shape our sense of worth, place, and identity.

Through the subversion of cultural codes, O’Riordan treats sculpture as a tool for semi-fictional worldbuilding. The works interrogate dominant frameworks through large-scale installations and detailed objects that often spill outward as rebellious, sometimes playful, built environments.

Seán is a graduate of NCAD, Dublin (BA Fine Art, 2016), and the Sandberg Instituut, Amsterdam (MFA, 2023). Their work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including at VISUAL Carlow, Engage Art Studios (Galway), W139 (Amsterdam), and Western Carolina University (US).