Selected Group Exhibitions
Sep 2026 Atheneum Club, Abject Gallery, Sunderland.
May-June 2026 This Time I Have A Reason, Abject Gallery, Sunderland.
May 2026 A Celebration Of Dry Run, Shipley Art Gallery, Gateshead.
May 2026 And Yet It Moves, Moving Gallery, Sunderland.
Dec 2025 Collective Disruption, The Newbridge Project, Newcastle.
Sep-Nov 2024 The Newbridge 'Open' Open, The Newbridge Project, Newcastle.
May-June 2024 Bog Of The Udder Plant as part of Falmouth Degree Showcase, Lamorva House, Falmouth
April-May 2024 A Celebration Of The Seagull, Jupiter Gallery, Newlyn.
Nov-Feb 2024 Changing Tides, Newlyn Art Gallery The Exchange, Penzance.
Oct-Jan 2024 Spirit Of Cornwall, Royal Cornwall Museum, Truro.
Sep-Oct 2023 Punch Card, The Auxiliary, Middlesbrough.
June 2023 Good Daughter/Evil Nymph, Mossy Crow, Penryn.
May 2023 Repertoire Of Nonsense, The Poly, Falmouth.
Mar-May 2023 BAMS Medal Project, Central Saint Martins, London.
Feb-March 2023 Monstrous And The Miniature, Grays Wharf, Penryn.
Education & Residencies
2025-2026 Breeze Best Practice, Sunderland.
April 2025 Maison La Famille Residency, France.
2024-2025 Site Joinery Level 2, Sunderland.
2024-2025 The Newbridge Project Collective Studio, Newcastle.
2024 Fresco training, Florence.
Sep-Oct 2024 Wilhelmina Barns Graham Travel To Italy Award: Rome, Venice, Florence
2021-2024 Ba Fine Art, Falmouth University.
March 2024 Porthmeor Studios residency, St Ives.
July 2023 Cyprus College of Art residency, Lempa.
March 2023 Cornubian Arts and Science Trust (CAST) residency, Helston.
Professional Experience
2025-Present Workshop facilitator and technician
2023-2024 Newlyn Art Gallery Volunteer
2023 Red Bull Doodle Art Mural Assistant
2022-2024 Tate St Ives Collective Producer
2021-2022 Instagram Art Ambassador
Biography
Sweeney graduated Falmouth University with a Ba (Hons) in Fine Art in 2024, later becoming a Collective Studio Member at The Newbridge Project in 2025 and Breeze Best Practice in 2026. In 2023 Sweeney was awarded Emerging Artist at Royal Cornwall Museum, awarded The Wilhelmina Barns Graham Travel To Italy Award in 2024 and nominated for The New Blood Art Prize. Sweeney has been resident artist at Cornubian Arts and Science Trust, Porthmeor Studios, The Cyprus College of Art, Accademia D’Arts Firenze and Maison La Famille.
Statement
Sweeney's practice is interested in investigating the lives of objects through a lens of human desire, concealment and a naïve animism. Focused on narrative building to connect human, nonhuman and machine, Sweeney often subjects discarded objects and architectural elements to consider the introspection of waste objects, human form and emotion. Style drifts between childlike and polished forms, candied colours and earth tones, patterns and flatness, where elements are used to build friction and invite placelessness as a site for vulnerability. Imagery sourced from both automatic studies and archival references aim to create a surreal awkwardness and familiarity reminiscent of the world around us.
Whilst using the framework of play, video performance is used within sculptural drawings to include human-non human mimicry and pull humour from the juxtaposition of high and low cultural materials. For example, performativity extends to object: interactive kinetic sculptures, and screens inconveniently placed into found objects. Traditional processes such as fresco, joinery, marquetry and pigment are used as connectors to the land, history and to create a contradictory illusion of time. Sweeney creates forms that fluctuate between figuration and abstraction to produce a tender confusion, imitating moments of concealment, bodily encounters and fictionalised human-object communication. Aiming to tease viewer introspection within questions of control, exposure, sympathy and humour.
