Award at the Red Stables 2006/2007. 

The Red Stables artists studios complex is located in 300 acres of parkland in St Anne’s Park, Dublin 3 on the former Guinness family estate. 
 
Based in memory McSweeney’s work explores a kind of fictional world: envisioning past, future and present places. The experience of living and working in the park influencing themes and motifs within the work. His paintings built up over time undergo much change and reworking generating a certain history of marks and surface from which landscapes, cityscapes, still-lifes and other scenes and narratives take shape.  Many are boards and canvases started years previous on which work has continued.  The sculptures in the exhibition include large a number of large scale works made from found materials, animated by motors, light and sound. Born in 1978 Tadhg McSweeney graduated from NCAD in 2001. Recent solo shows include What Remains, at the Sligo Art Gallery 2007 and Break in at the Museum, at Kevin Kavanagh Gallery Dublin 2006.
"If there is a rueful, mediative quality to much of what McSweeney does, a sense of regarding civilization as a patch-up job, a bricolage or a hodgepodge - and there surely is - it's not something that he bemoans or regrets.  Its haphazard and unfinished nature is what allows access to the world we find ourselves in, what opens up possibilities and encourages a playful inventiveness. Ingenuity is evident in his knack of making almost something out of almost nothing.  The "almost" is important, because he never makes any claims in relation to completion or conventional formal coherence.  His pieces maintain an openness, they are negotiable."
 
Extract from catalogue essay by Aidan Dunne, 2008
 For further information or visuals please contact sheena.barrett@dublincity.ie or telephone 01 222 7850