NSF Ireland

24/07/2025

This week for throwback Thursday we're sharing Sculpting Air - The Sound of the Sky

As part of Cork Midsummer Festival's 2017 programme, artist Robert Curgenven gave a live performance on the Factory floor.
The performance placed the audience at the centre of the intricate relationship between sound and location, and between people and air. Showcasing material from Curgenven’s 2016 album Climata – sculpting the air via an impressive surround sound system placed around the audience. Climata is comprised entirely of site-specific recordings captured in 15 of American light artist James Turrell’s Skyspaces across 9 countries. Turrell’s Skyspaces are specifically proportioned chambers with an opening in the ceiling through which one can view the sky. Recorded one note at a time, the 200 recordings across 15 locations use a unique process to create a movement between each Skyspace’s interior and exterior – in effect, making the air in these spaces audible.

Photo credit: Jed Niezgoda

22/07/2025

Working through lunch on a Tuesday.
NSF ceramic artist Nuala O'Donovan, assembling one of her largest teasels to date.

15/07/2025

Announcing the 2025 Graduate Residency Award recipients.

Image 1 - Ciara Sheehan - TUS LSAD, Sculpture & Combined Media Award
Image 2 - Criss Constantin - MTU CCAD, Fine Art Award
Image 3 - Megan Fahy - MTU CCAD, Contemporary Applied Art Award
Image 4 - Tara Myers - SETU, Fine Art Award

NSF has the support of artists at all stages of their careers, at its very heart. Experimentation and learning where next in articulation and expression of art making makes having space and time to think things through, really important, so that exploring and developing their practice of art-making in all their forms of expression and production can continue. To this end, NSF has developed a very successful element of its programme where recent graduates experience the conditions for making decisions and opportunities of having a studio practice and working in the field, just after graduating from the supportive and productive college environment.

Graduate Residency awards include: free studio rental for 3 months with material stipend; technical and administrative support; curatorial and peer support; mentorship and free access to educational & technical workshops/lectures. Successful candidates are selected on their degree show submissions and how the NSF can help develop the potential of their practice.
This year, NSF has awarded 4 graduate residency awards to 3 institutions; Limerick School of Art & Design TUS, Crawford College of Art and Design an South East Technological University.

10/07/2025

NSF artist, Ben Reilly, is currently splitting his time between the Factory and his residency in Skibbereen at Uillinn: West Cork Arts Centre.
You can visit him this Saturday 12 July from 12 noon to 2pm for an Open Studio, alongside Uillinn's two other resident artists Tanya de Paor and Murrough O'Donovan.

03/07/2025

Uillinn: West Cork Arts Centre has announced the winners of its 40th anniversary awards, and among the recipients are NSF artists Sophie Longwill and Ben Reilly, winning the the Morgan O Driscoll Fine Art Auctioneers Award.

"Ms Longwill, a glass sculptor, was recognised for 1000 Fleeting Moments, a meditation on the passing of time composed of 1,000 individually flame-formed glass leaves. Mr Reilly’s winning work, Peter the Painter, is a sculptural piece made from salvaged materials such as wood, rubber and wax."

During what was a first for the centre, the public was invited to participate directly in the judging process, alongside a jury of representatives ...

01/07/2025

Ceramicist Sally Cush recently joined us on the Factory floor; today's packing day as she gets vases ready to send to Millcove Gallery ahead of their Excellence in Irish Ceramic Exhibition. Check out those absolutely gorgeous colours and textures 😍

Sally Cush Ceramics Mill Cove Gallery

25/06/2025

Deadline approaching!
5pm, Monday 30th June 2025

This is an Open Call for Independent Creative Producers and Freelance Curators working in the Visual Arts in Ireland. Kunstverein Aughrim are seeking applications from individuals interested in participating in new Creative Producer Programme - a training and development initiative supported by the Arts Council through the Creative Production Supports scheme.
Read more and apply here - https://kunstverein.ie/Open-Call

We are delighted for the NSF to join this initiative as a partner organisation, alongside EVA International - Ireland's Biennial of Contemporary Art, Fire Station Artists' Studios, Galway Arts Centre, Ireland at Venice, Mermaid County Wicklow Arts Centre, Ormston House, Regional Cultural Centre, Letterkenny, Sirius Arts Centre The Dock The Douglas Hyde Gallery of Contemporary Art, and VISUAL Carlow.

Commencing in September 2025, the 18-month programme will consist of: Training Days, Development Days, International Collaboration, Practice-based Placement & Publication.
Participants will receive ongoing curatorial guidance and support, access to training and development, and a bursary of €12,000 as part of their participation.

20/06/2025

Fruiting Futures by Sarah Lou Kinneen
Cork Midsummer Festival
19 - 21 June | 12pm - 5pm
📍 Cork Centre for Architectural Education

An immersive installation grown from waste, care, and connection, inviting audiences to step inside a space shaped by renewal and possibility.
As you move through walls of living fungal threads - grown from locally-sourced waste materials - experience a structure that is still becoming, still alive.
This evolving, organic space imagines sustainability not as something distant, but as something intimate: a process of growth, collaboration, and deep-rooted connection with the natural world.

Created by Wexford-born, Cork-based artist Sarah Lou Kinneen and developed during her graduate residency here at the National Sculpture Factory, Kinneen’s interdisciplinary practice explores the meeting points of ecology and visual art.

19/06/2025

We love having visitors 😁
Sample-Studios are hosting artists from San Francisco Artist Studios as part of an exchange, and a tour of the Factory was on the itinerary earlier this week.

Get in touch with us if you'd like to have a tour for your organisation.

13/06/2025

The Score & Other Works by James L Hayes
Sat 14 June - Sat 19 July | GOMA Gallery of Modern Art Waterford
Official launch: Saturday 14 June 6 - 8pm, all welcome!

The Score is a multifaceted contemporary art project by Cork-based artist James L Hayes, developed in collaboration with and curated by Peter Power, combining cast iron sculpture, film, and sound. The work explores the materiality, heritage, and cultural spectacle of the ancient Irish sport of road bowling.

The first iteration of The Score was Commissioned by Cork County Council in 2021 and supported by Creative Ireland. Taking three years to complete, The Score explores the heritage, culture and sporting tradition of Irish road bowling that has been played in County Cork and across Ireland since the seventeenth century.

The work highlights a non-narrative artistic observation of the game, its athleticism, theatre and spectacle, as well as acknowledging its long-standing heritage and tradition. The exhibition features Hayes’s cast iron road bowls alongside film and sound works that present a distinctive creative response to the sport, developed in collaboration with members and players from Ból Chumann na hÉireann.

11/06/2025

Studio presentation of new sculptural works & work in progress by Maeve Lynch at The National Sculpture Factory, 9 May 2025.

Maeve Lynch has been engaging in an intensive period of material research, experimentation & production in glass & clay since mid 2023 at NSF. To mark the conclusion of this current period of research & time in the Factory, Maeve opened her studio and installed her work throughout the National Sculpture Factory. The presentation served as a test site for newly developed work and work in progress and an opportunity for discussion with peers.

The work, which has developed into an exploration of embodied structures, is informed by the elemental materials and processes of cast and fused glass and clay and by the factory itself. The work is combined with less precious materials of found or recycled papers, packaging and metal bar and wire.

All photos by John Beasley, courtesy of the artist.

05/06/2025

Congratulations to the graduating classes of MTU Crawford College of Art and Design 2025! Don't miss their end of year shows.
The Department of Media Communications exhibition opens this evening, Thursday 5th June at 6PM. The Department of Fine Art & Applied Art exhibition opens tomorrow, Friday 6th June at 6PM.

MTU Arts Office Munster Technological University