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Toma McCullim

Skibbereen, West Cork, Ireland. 26th July, 2019. The launch of a year long artist residency took place this afternoon in Cara House, Skibbereen. Artist, Toma McCullim, will be based at the Ludgate Hub for the length of the residency, the project is called 'Calling Home'. The project explores the lived experiences of theWest Cork people who left Ireland in the '50's and '60's. The project will involve the diaspora. ARtist Toma McCullim adresses the assembled crowd. Picture: Andy Gibson.

Toma has a 1st class BA (hons) Degree in Anthropology of Art from the University of East Anglia and has an MA in Arts Process from the Crawford College of Art and Design, Cork. She has been awarded grants from Create/ Arts Council and the Cork County Arts Dept. for her participative arts work. Her own work has shown nationally and internationally.

Most recently Toma received the Cork County Council Artist Residency Bursary for her work BENDER, an intersectional residency which explored Toma’s experience of living outside in a tent structure while living as part of the Greenham Common Women’s anti nuclear protests with Travellers who also had lived in these type of structures.

Toma calls herself an ‘Artivist’ that is an activist artist. Her work is powered by a strong belief in social justice and environmental ecology. Her participatory practice empowers her collaborators in the amplification of their own authentic voice. As an anthropologist of art she is most interested in the fundamental question ‘What does art do ?’ Her work stimulates a call to action for creative change making.

She was Business to Arts Artist in Residence in Skibbereen’s Ludgate Hub working on Calling Home, 2019 – 20. Her year long residency in Skibbereen Hospital resulted in the bronze artwork 110 Skibbereen Girls. 

She was Artist in Residence at Uillinn West Cork Art Centre in 2015, which led to her exhibition about dementia, These Tangled Threads, in August of that year. A long form poem describing the making process  can be found here. 
Toma has worked in theatre and film design, most recently as production designer on Carmel Winter’s award winning Float Like a Butterfly, 2017.

Still from short film Sweet Shop.
High Home, installation detail.
Behold, participative project, Essaouira, Morocco.