Commissioning
Commissioning new work is an important aspect of the NSF's activities. As an
independent organisation, the National Sculpture Factory uses commissioning as a tool to create new opportunities
for artists, initiate new artistic partnerships and to set a standard as a commissioning
body (both for the models of commissioning and the works produced). Past commissions
have included works by performance artists in a range of settings, multi-media
works responding to dramatic architectural sites, temporary public interventions
examining specific issues (through diverse media) and projects encouraging inter-disciplinary
collaboration. Since 2006, we have an annual commission for an
intervention on the exterior of the factory wall. In 2008, the NSF is
commissioning a suite of
three temporary artworks in the Docklands
area of Cork.
Residencies
Local, national and international artists regularly undertake residencies at
the National Sculpture Factory. Up to 12 artists can work in the space at one time, thereby providing
a collective work environment where artists can exchange ideas and find a critical
context for their work.
The NSF runs an artist-in-residence programme which aims to support artists at various stages of their careers and is run annually by open submission. We offer an award for an Emerging Artist in Ireland, an award for an Artist in Mid-career (any nationality) and we have just launched an Australia/Ireland Exchange residency. As well as these, we offer an annual award to an Outstanding Student at the Crawford College of Art & Design degree shows.
The NSF has 3 major residency opportunities annually for artists at all stages of their careers and open to any type of practice. The 2008 residencies have already been awarded. NSF is currently planning a major refurbishment of the building, thus the 2009 residency programme cannot be confirmed as yet.
NSF is also the participating host venue in Ireland of the prestigious Pépiničres Européennes pour Jeunes Artistes Programme that supports and facilitates the cultural exchange of artists of outstanding potential. See Pépiničres
Lectures and Conferences
As well as commissioning art works, the National Sculpture Factory also organises
conferences and a lecture series in order to facilitate a high level of critical
thought and debate relating to all aspects of creativity.
Past events have included a national conference called Public Art Making it Work, which invited leading artists, curators and theorists to discuss issues surrounding the commissioning and placing of public art, 'Get that Balance: Performance Art Now', provided an opportunity for critical debate through seminar discussions on issues facing performance art, and finally a conference drawing attention to the importance of thoughtful and creative urban planning called Designing Cities, has been one of our most successful and wide reaching conferences.
In 2007, NSF programmed a major interdisciplinary conference on the built environment desIRE: designing houses for contemporary Ireland and a seminar exploring the relationship between globalisation and art Do You Speak Art? (or where are you coming from?)
Our free public lecture series invites leading art professionals to discuss their practice with the artistic community of Cork. Guest speakers have included Richard Wentworth, Kiki Smith, Dorothy Cross, Anya Gallacio, Liam Gillick, Jeremy Dellar and Tony Fretton, Elia Zenghelis, David Toop, Maria Eichhorn, Surasi Kusolwong.
Open Submission Competition for Cork Artists
The National Sculpture Factory is pleased to announce three new temporary commissions in Cork City’s Docklands/Port of Cork area, in 2008. The NSF is inviting a national and an international artist to create new temporary projects and providing a unique opportunity for a Cork artist to engage with the area in this transitional stage, via open submission.
Artists from or resident in Cork are invited to apply for the Open Submission commission. The project /artwork can be in any material. The total commission is worth €5000 including artist’s fee, and material /installation costs.
NSF’s commissions programme is intended to create opportunities for artists to make ambitious work in the public realm and to increase the breadth of work available in Cork. This particular commission is an opportunity for artists to engage with the area at this transitional stage.
Info session and Site visit: Tuesday 26 February.
Closing date for applications is 31 March 2008.
To register for the site visit, contact Treasa O’Brien, NSF Programme Manager: treasa@nationalsculpturefactory.com Tel: 021 4314353
Emerging Irish Artist Professional Development Award
This award is
aimed at emerging artists* and is intended to encourage and
promote the creative use of
National Sculpture Factory
workshop space, with
an emphasis on the facilities and equipment provided.
It is also intended to
support artists at a difficult time in their career.
It
offers workshop space,
training, IT facilities, administrative support and a stipend for 2 months.
Award
includes:
* * * * *
Do you speak art? (or where are you coming from?)
Globalisation and the ‘International’ Language of Art
Venue: Stack Theatre, Cork School of Music, Union Quay, Cork
Date: Saturday 3 November
Time: 10.30 am – 5.30 pm and 7.00 pm (see below), €20/€15 (NSF member)
Today, globalisation affects almost all art practice on some level. This is
evident through travel, research, exchange, residencies, economics,
institutional relationships, and of course, the phenomenon of international
showcase event-culture.
This discursive event will explore how culture, and specifically visual art, is
being impacted and mediated in the context of globalisation. Issues to be
explored include the idea of an ‘international style', cultural exchange and
diversity v homogenisation, biennial culture and a look at the Irish context.
Speakers include Dr. Brigitte Franzen (curator for skulptur projekte münster
07), Caoimhin Mac Giolla Leith (writer/critic/curator) John Byrne (John Moore
University and Static, Liverpool), Lucy Cotter (writer and critic) and Katie
Holten (artist) More speakers to be announced in September.
des/IRE Conference
23 to 25 May 2007
Gresham Metropole Hotel,
MacCurtain Street,
Cork.
Introduction
Conference
Schedule
Bookings
Speakers’
Biographies
Home
Improvement Commission (Sarah Browne)
SubUrban to SuperRural Exhibition
The Space
In-Between
des/IRE Vox Pop
Other Conference Activity/Amenities and Locations
Press
Sponsors
The National Sculpture Factory has three desired outcomes from this conference:
The latest 2006 census shows an unprecedented growth in the population of Ireland. This factor is set to create an even greater demand for housing and development than already exists, and all the signs are that it is going to continue to grow. This is ably demonstrated by the phenomenal statistic that one third of all houses built in Ireland have been built since 1995. With huge money to be made from developing land in Ireland, the perils of commercially driven development is becoming more and more a topic of conversation and a cause for concern.
This concern is obviously environmental, social and economic, but it is also a visual issue for those whose understanding of the environment is about both sustainability and the future of the planet and how we experience the landscape (and its effect upon us) in a visual way.
How can we control and creatively think through our current development boom? How do we persuade those who are responsible for creating housing policy and those who are developing our landscape, that quality of life issues are contingent on good design and more importantly, that money can be made from good design? What mix of skills and expertises are needed to create quality environments? What models are there, how do we bring the key stakeholders together, and what do we have to learn from other countries’ experiences?
This conference will put the spotlight on housing design as an area of architecture and development that is often ignored by cultural organisations and the media, particularly amidst the competing, larger-scale, more attention-grabbing civic buildings.
Adding commercial value from a government and property developer’s perspective, we will look at issues of ‘taste’, sociology, the artist, culture, and history in architecture and housing and will debate the role of education in creating better design, more discerning ‘customers’ and better environments. The conference will examine the influence of building regulations in creating ‘standardisation’ at the expense of innovative design and will consider the hidden role of mortgage brokers, bankers and estate agents. Through this conference we acknowledge housing’s significance not only as the primary driver of the economy, but more importantly as a reflection of how much value we place on where and how we live.
23 May
6.00pm Reception and launch of Conference hosted by the Lord Mayor – Opening of SubUrban to SuperRural Exhibition and Home Improvement Commission
Venue: Webworks, Eglinton St., Cork.
24 MAY
DO WE NEED GOOD DESIGN AND WHAT IS IT?
9.00 am Registration and Coffee
10.15 am Welcome: Tara Byrne – Director, National Sculpture Factory
Keynote: John Sorrell -The Sorrell Foundation
Mary P Corcoran - Senior Lecturer, Dept. Sociology, Maynooth
John O Connor – Chief Executive, Affordable Homes Partnership
Apolonija šušteršič - Artist and Architect
Questions chaired by Gemma Tipton
1.00 pm ERNST & YOUNG LUNCH
2.15pm “When People Move In…”
Conversation with
Mick McDonagh (Cork City Architect and ex architect with Ballymun Regeneration
Ltd.) and Lynda Ward (Ballymun Resident and Housing and Community Student),
chaired by Evelyn Hanlon (Dublin City Council)
Sean Griffiths - Co-Director of FAT (Fashion, Architecture, Taste)
COFFEE
Patrick
Sheridan - Architect and member of Urban Splash
Dominic Stevens - Architect
The People Know What They Want, Give It To Them V Designers Know Best
Debate chaired by Gemma Tipton
Team A: “The People Know what they want, give it to them”
Tom Spalding
Pat Ruane
Stephen Baxter
Sean Griffiths
Louise Cotter
Questions chaired by Gemma Tipton
8pm Delegates Dinner – Clarion Hotel, Lapps Quay.
25 MAY
What is Being Done?
9.15 am Minister Michael Martin
Wayne Hemingway – Designer, Property Developer and Lecturer
Bik van der Pol - Artists
Henk van der Kamp – President, Irish Planning Institute
COFFEE
Emmett Scanlon – Architectural Consultant, the Arts Council of Ireland
Alan Mee – Architect and Director of Urban Design, UCD
Shane O Toole - Architect and commissioner for SubUrban to SuperRura
Questions chaired by Gemma Tipton
1.00 pm LUNCH
Ways Forward
2.15 pm Richard Simmons – Chief Executive of CABE, UK (Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment)
Hugh Pearman - Architecture and Design Critic
John Sorrell- The Sorrell Foundation
Frank McDonald – Environment Editor, The Irish Times
Panel Discussion chaired by Gemma Tipton
4.00 pm FINISH
26 MAY
11.00am Walking on Water: Walking Tour of Cork City (see other conference activity)
1.00 pm End
Architectural tour with Pat Ruane, starting in Lapp’s Quay outside the Clarion Hotel, and finishing in the Glucksman Gallery.
Rotterdam-based artists Bik Van der Pol (Liesbeth Bik and Jos van der Pol) work collaboratively since 1995. Proceeding from their engagement with their surroundings, they create projects, often architecturally inspired, through which they confront the public with a specific place and invite people to think - and act accordingly- about the history and future of that site and about the city in general.
Steven Baxter
Chartered town planner and lecturer in the Department of Applied Social Studies,
University College Cork, where he is delivering a postgraduate masters course in
Planning & Sustainable Development. He has experience in town planning and
various housing issues in both public and private sectors in England and
Ireland, and is a corporate member of the Royal Town Planning Institute.
Louise Cotter
Louise Cotter is chairperson of the Southern Region RIAI, which has an active
and lively programme of lectures, study tours and site visits around the region,
and writes from time to time on architectural issues. She is a partner in local
architecture practice, Carr Cotter Naessens, the work of which has been
exhibited most recently in the Vision Centre, Cork and previously in the Irish
Architecture Awards, Opus awards and the RIBA. The partners have won 3 AAI
awards. Prior to living in Cork, Louise Cotter worked in London with Jeremy
Dixon Edward Jones, John Miller and Partners and Julyan Wickham on a range of
public projects and urban housing.
John O'Connor
John O'Connor
is the Chief Executive Officer of the Affordable Homes Partnership and is also a
member of the Board. Formerly Executive Manager with Dublin City Council, John
worked on affordable housing projects and was involved in many of the City
Council's major regeneration projects (e.g. Fatima Mansions).
Sean Griffiths
Sean Griffiths is co-Director of the provocative art-architecture collaborative
FAT, whose design work and art projects have been widely and internationally
published, exhibited and discussed. Besides prolific architecture and design
projects, art work, media work and their regular curation of group exhibitions
and installations, Griffiths has taught extensively both in the UK and as
visiting critic and lecturer in institutions around the world. He has also
contributed to books, journals and magazines worldwide.
www.fashionarchitecturetaste.com
Evelyn Hanlon
While
Finance Director and Administration Manager of Ballymun Regeneration Ltd, Evelyn
Hanlon was, amongst other things, responsible for the application of Breaking
Ground, the most comprehensive and diverse per cent for art programme in
Ireland. In turn, Breaking Ground was part of a larger Community Sustainability
Strategy, which Evelyn managed. This strategy developed and
implemented interventions of a community, social, economic and cultural nature,
as part of a process of re-engaging Ballymun with neighbouring areas and
the City itself.
Wayne Hemmingway MBE
Having graduated with a Degree in Geography and Town Planning, Wayne Hemmingway
moved into the fashion industry, co-founding the award-winning Red or Dead
Fashion Label. He moved on through Hemmingway Design with a design range of
interiors products, to specialise in affordable and social design with mass
market housing projects in the UK such as Tyneside’s The Straiths South Bank,
which has won a series of high profile awards, affordable apartment regeneration
in Manchester, and The “Bridge” scheme in Dartford. Professor in The Built
Environment Department, Northumbria University, Doctor of Design at
Wolverhampton, his ‘Just Above the Mantelpiece’ was published in 2000 and Mass
Market Classics in 2003. He is a judge of international design competitions and
Chairman of Building for Life (www.buildingforlife.org.)
a CABE funded organization that promotes excellence in the quality of design of
new housing. His latest business “ The Land of Lost Content”
www.lolc.co.uk
is a world-first archive of 20th & 21st century popular
culture.
Minister Michéal Martin
TD
Minister for
Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Michéal Martin, a native of Cork City and Lord
Mayor 1992-93, was first elected to Dáil Éireann in 1989 and was Lord Mayor of
Cork from 1992-93. He has been Chairman of the Oireachtas All Party Committee on
the Irish Language, member of the Dáil Committees on Crime, Finance and General
Affairs and opposition spokesperson for Education and the Gaeltacht. As a
Cabinet Minister, he has served as Minister for Education and Science and
Minister for Health prior to his current position.
Mick McDonagh
A graduate
of Architecture from D.I.T. Bolton Street, he worked in the private sector, in
Dublin City Council and South Dublin County Council, before becoming chief
Architect with Ballymun Regeneration Ltd. McDonagh was appointed Cork City
Architect in 2006.
Frank McDonald
Frank
McDonald is from Dublin and lives in Temple Bar, the city’s ‘cultural quarter’.
Educated at St Vincent's CBS Glasnevin and UCD, he is Environment Editor of
The Irish Times. He has won several awards, including one for Outstanding
Work in Irish Journalism. He is the author of The Destruction of Dublin
(1985) and Saving the City (1989), two books that helped to change Irish
public policy on urban renewal. More recently, he co-authored Ireland’s
Earthen Houses and edited The Ecological Footprint of Cities, both
published in 1997. His third book on Dublin, The Construction of Dublin (Gandon,
2000), became a non-fiction bestseller. He is also joint author with James Nix
of Chaos at the Crossroads (2005), a book documenting the environmental
destruction of Ireland. In October 2006, he was awarded an honorary DPhil by
Dublin Institute of Technology.
Alan Mee
Alan Mee is an architect with experience of working in the urban design,
architectural and educational fields for over fifteen years. Since 2002, he has
operated a private practice, set up to respond to a growing demand for design
quality in local development. Current work ranges from large scale urban
planning to domestic work. He is also Director of the Urban Design Masters
programme at UCD. He has been a Member of the Board of Architectural Education
of the RIAI, a Committee Member of the AAI, and contributes writing to the
professional journals of both institutions as well as to other publications.
Alan Mee was one of the founding members of Urban Design Ireland, www.udi.ie.
Alan Mee Architects was shortlisted with one other entry to curate the Irish
representation at Venice Architecture Biennale 2006.
Shane O’Toole
Inaugural
curator/director of the Irish Architecture Foundation, Shane O’Toole was a
founding director of urban design collective Group 91 Architects, before joining
Tegral, where he has been company architect since 1994. He is a past President
of the AAI, was co-founder of Docomomo International at Eindhoven in 1990 and
is, since 1999, Irish architecture critic for The Sunday Times. He was Ireland’s
Commissioner for Metamorph, the Venice Biennale International
Architecture Exhibition in 2002, and again for
SubUrban to SuperRural
in 2006. A
member of the jury for the Mies van der Rohe Award for European Architecture in
2003, he is a Fellow of the Salzburg Seminar. He won the Grand Prix at the
Cracow Architecture Biennale in 1989 for Collaboration: The Pillar Project, was
a finalist in the Mies van der Rohe Award in 1996 and was awarded the UIA’s Sir
Patrick Abercrombie Prize in 2002 for Group 91’s redevelopment of Temple Bar,
Dublin. He won the AAI’s Downes Medal and received a high commendation in the
RIAI’s Triennial Gold Medal for The Ark (Temple Bar, 1995), Europe’s first
cultural centre for children, designed with Michael Kelly and Susan Cogan.
Hugh Pearman
London-based architecture and design critic, Hugh Pearman has been attached to The Sunday Times, London, since 1986. He writes for a wide range of other design and consumer titles, and frequently teaches and lectures. Publications include: Airport: a Century of Architecture (2004), Contemporary World Architecture (1998), Equilibrium: The Work of Nicholas Grimshaw and Partners (2002) and 30 Bridges by Matthew Well, Introduction by Hugh Pearman (2002). His website Gabion, Retained Writing on Architecture, www.hughpearman.com, is a selection of his writings in various media. He is an honorary fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects, has served on the architecture panel of the Arts Council, chaired the Art for Architecture initiative at the Royal Society of Arts, and acted as assessor on several architecture and design competitions.
Pat Ruane
Cork City Council
Conservation Officer since 2000, Architect, graduated from UCD School of
Architecture, worked in Central America, Scotland, Spain and Portugal before
returning to Ireland 15 years ago. Obtained a Masters in Urban and Building
Conservation from UCD in 1996, specializing afterwards in urban and rural
vernacular structures. My great interest is in the ordinary buildings, both old
and new, which make up the built environment we all experience in everyday life.
Emmett Scanlon
Emmett Scanlon is co-director of CAST architecture, established in 2006, a design and research practice based in Dublin. The practice is currently working on homes throughout Ireland and is particularly interested in the process and practice of domestic occupation. From 1998-2006, he worked with Grafton Architects, becoming Project Director in 2003. Projects completed with Grafton Architects include Solstice Meath Arts Centre and Theatre, Navan, [2003-2006]. In 2006 he was appointed Architecture Adviser to the Arts Council and became College Lecturer in University College Dublin. He is Irish correspondent for A10magainze, The Netherlands.
Patrick Sheridan
Patrick Sheridan is an architect and member of the development team of innovative UK property developers Urban Splash. Urban Splash works on the basis that any urban redevelopment is about more than just bricks and mortar. It’s about using enlightened design, creating new communities, enhancing people’s lifestyles. Set up in 1993 by Tom Bloxham and Jonathan Falkingham, Urban Splash has already created over one million sq ft of award-winning residential and commercial space, with another 100 million sq ft in the pipeline.
Richard Simons
Richard Simmons is a town planner and Chief Executive of CABE. He has a Doctorate in Urban History and Urban Economics. He worked as a planner in a number of Local Authorities before joining the Inner Cities Directorate of the Department of the Environment in the early 1980s. After a period advising on regeneration policy he moved to the London Docklands Development Corporation. He led teams developing master plans for the development of the Royal Docks and Canary Wharf, building infrastructure and selling land for development. In the early 1990s he became Chief Executive of the Dalston City Challenge regeneration company in Hackney. There he led a five-year programme of economic, social and physical renewal before becoming Director of Development and Environment for the new Unitary Council of Medway.
John Sorrell CBE
John is Co-Chair of the Sorrell Foundation, which aims to inspire creativity in young people and improve quality of life through good design. He is the Chairman of the London Design Festival, which he originated with the purpose of celebrating and promoting London and the UK’s creativity. John was appointed Chair of CABE (Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment) in December 2004. CABE is the Government’s advisor on architecture, urban design and public space. Previously John chaired the Design Council from 1994 to 2000 and also chaired Newell and Sorrell, one of Europe’s biggest and most successful design companies, between 1976 and 2000. John was appointed CBE in 1996, holds three Honorary Design Doctorates, an Honorary Design Fellowship and is an Honorary Doctor of Philosophy. He was awarded the Royal Society of Arts Bicentenary Medal in 1998 and elected an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects in 2002.
Tom Spalding
Tom is a
volunteer Planning Monitor for An Taisce (The National Trust for Ireland). He
works as part of a team to review planning applications on behalf of An Taisce
in Cork City. He is also a qualified design engineer and teaches design to
degree level. Due to bad fate he was born outside the “Rebel City”, but has
tried to make amends by living, learning and working in Cork for the greater
part of thirty years.
Dominic Stevens
Dominic Stevens worked for Christoph Langhof and Leipe Stegelmann, Berlin before moving to Co. Leitrim. He was Architect-in-residence with Roscommon County Council in 2005: ‘Making Houses in Rural Ireland’ and exhibited at the Venice Biennale 10th International Architecture Exhibition in 2006. He won an AAI Award in 1999 and in 2005 was won the Arts Council / Office of Public Works research bursary, the Kevin Kieran Award. A former editor of Building Material, the journal of the AAI, his publications include: 1999 Domestic, an approach to the design of domestic buildings Mermaid Turbulence; 2001 Drawing by Hand in Element, Mermaid Turbulence; 2003 What Becomes of Rural Ireland? in Irish Review, Cork University Press; and 2005 Neo Rural Architecture in Building Material 13, AAI.
Apolonija Šušteršič is an artist and architect. She is interested in space and its mental, social and physical attributes and focuses on the subject of architecture in its extended field.
Gemma Tipton
Gemma Tipton is an independent writer and critic of contemporary art and architecture. Based in Dublin, she contributes regularly to art and architectural publications, panel discussions, lectures, radio and television programmes in Ireland and internationally. Reviews, features and interviews are published in The Irish Times, Art and Architecture Journal, Artists Newsletter, Irish Arts Review, CIRCA, Fuse, Irish Museums Journal, Selvedge, Apollo and VANS. She has been manager of CIRCA Magazine and editor of Contexts. Gemma has also been a judge for the Museum of the Year Awards, and for the AIB Prize. Gemma is the editor of Space: Architecture for Art, an investigation of the architecture of contemporary art galleries; and author of Home, a study of contemporary memorials. In 2001 she was awarded the Arts Council’s Critic’s Bursary in Contemporary Architecture Writing. She writes catalogue essays, has had a series of exhibitions of her own work, and has worked as an independent curator.
Lynda Ward
Lynda Ward is a resident of Ballymun. She is currently completing a degree in “Housing and Community” in UCD, delivered by Respond Housing Association. This is a new degree course, from which Linda will be graduating in May 2007. Since 2000, Lynda has worked as Project Worker with CAFTA (Community and Family Training Agency) a community based training agency. The programme works specifically with residents moving form the flats into their new homes. The Housing Transition Programme is delivered on behalf of BRL by the Transition Programme team.
Hendrik W van der Kamp
Hendrik W van der Kamp is a practising town planner and the Head of School of Spatial Planning in Dublin Institute of Technology. He has over twenty years experience in professional planning practice in Ireland and has worked in Cork County Council, An Foras Forbartha, and An Bord Pleanala. Since 1995 he has been centrally involved in the education of professional planners in Ireland, first in the planning school in University College Dublin and since 1999 in DIT where he was responsible for the introduction of new BSc and MSc programmes in spatial planning, to satisfy the increased need for planners in local authorities. As well as providing planning advice to local community groups, architects, planning consultants and private developers, he has given advice and acted as an expert evaluator to a range of public sector bodies including Government Departments and the European Commission. He was member of the Renewable Energy Strategy Group and the Expert Advisory Group for the NSS. He is a member of the Institution of Engineers of Ireland and is the current President of the Irish Planning Institute.
Print
Page
about nsf ::
program ::
factory floor ::
des/IRE conference ::
contact nsf