Rory Tangney wins Experiment! Sculpture Award

Sculpture Dublin, in partnership with The LAB Gallery and Fire Station Artists’ Studios, is delighted to announce Rory Tangney as the winner of the Experiment! Sculpture Award.
Experiment! is a developmental award designed to provide a range of practical supports to an artist seeking to take creative risks within their practice, allowing them to further develop and refine their own sculptural language while pursuing new lines of enquiry.
The award includes:
- €12,000 for fees and materials for the production of new work
- A two week residency at Fire Station Artists’ Studios workshop facility
- A spotlight exhibition in the Cube at the LAB Gallery in late 2021
- Mentorship by an established artist (to be agreed in consultation with the winning artist)
- A commissioned written response to the work
- Photographic documentation of the work installed at The LAB Gallery
Sculpture Dublin received a high number of submissions and the Selection Panel was impressed by the overall quality of applications, which together speak to a great breadth of sculptural practice in Ireland today. The Selection Panel for the Experiment! Sculpture Award included:
- Sheena Barrett (Curator, The LAB Gallery)
- Helen Carey (Director, Fire Station Artists’ Studios)
- James Hayes (Artist extern)
- Pádraic E. Moore (Curator extern)
The Award will enable Rory to deepen his current focus on experimentation with new materials and processes. Questioning the environmental impact of many of the materials he has used in the past, Rory is increasingly focused on working with, and exploring the properties of found and salvaged materials. Rory said, “It’s a real honour to be given this opportunity. The supports included in the Experiment! will really allow me to grow in my practice. It is evolving from a refined, formal style into one which is much more expressive and unrestrained, and I’m looking forward to seeing what the year ahead holds and the work that I’ll produce.”
Rory Tangney is a visual artist based in Dublin, with a multi-disciplinary practice rooted in sculpture. His work has been presented in Italy, Berlin and the UK, as well as throughout Ireland in venues including the National Gallery, VISUAL Carlow, VOID Derry, Limerick City Gallery of Art, and broadcast on RTÉ Radio, among many others. He has been a prizewinner at the RHA Annual exhibition and his most recent body of work, Tales of the Futurepast (2020), was an online project funded through the Arts Council’s COVID 19 Response Award. He has taken part in several recent collaborations, most significantly with musician/composer Colm O’Hara for a group show in Solstice Arts Centre (2019) and in 2018 with dancer Mary Wycherley in the touring project Invisible Histories which was funded by the Arts Council.