Artist Announced for Gibson Travelling Fellowship Award

Crawford Art Gallery is delighted to announce visual artist Basil Al-Rawi as the recipient of the inaugural Gibson Travelling Fellowship Award.  

Basil Al-Rawi will become the first Gibson Travelling Fellow following a highly competitive open-call selection process, which sought to identify a clear vein of innovation, experimentation and impact.

Feint Recollections of a Time Beyond, 2024, video still. Courtesy of the artist.

Al-Rawi’s practice explores the landscapes of personal and cultural memory, hybrid identity, and the digital mediation of reality. He will use the award to support an extended period of self-determined enquiry across Lebanon, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and France.

Basil Al-Rawi is an Irish-Iraqi multidisciplinary artist working across photography, film, VR, and sculptural installation. His practice explores the landscapes of memory, identity, and the digital mediation of experience—often drawing from personal and collective archives to reimagine how memory can be spatialised and shared. His recent work engages participatory methods to reconstruct photographic and mnemonic moments from Iraqi diaspora, resulting in projects such as the Iraq Photo Archive and the immersive VR experience House of Memory / بيت الذاكرة . Basil holds degrees in English, sociology, cinematography, a Masters in photographic studies, and completed a practice-based PhD at The Glasgow School of Art in 2023. He has exhibited widely, including at IMMA, The Photographers’ Gallery, The LAB, and the Lahore Biennale, and his work is held in public and private collections. He is currently supported by the Arts Council of Ireland and continues to explore memoryscapes through hybrid forms of storytelling and digital media.

بيت الذاكرة / House of Memory, 2022 - present, VR still. Courtesy of the artist.

The Cork-based Irish-Iraqi artist was selected from a shortlist by a panel of experts working in the field of contemporary art: Dragana Jurišić (Artist and Educator), Megs Morley (Director and Curator, Galway Arts Centre), Paul McAree (Curator, Lismore Castle Arts), and chaired by Mary McCarthy (Director, Crawford Art Gallery). Impressed by the high quality of applicants, they ultimately determined that Al-Rawi’s proposal most closely articulated the spirit and scope of the Gibson Travelling Fellowship Award and has the potential for significant personal and professional transformation on the artist.

The panellists said:

‘We were very impressed by the quality and high calibre of artists who applied for this award. It highlighted to us the need for more developmental opportunities for artists that are flexible, open ended, and not outcome dependent. It is critical for Irish artists to be mobile, to develop their international networks and experience and to replenish their practices through self-directed and self-reflective opportunities’.

Basil Al-Rawi was selected from a shortlist of six artists who included Chloe Austin, Ursula Burke, Amanda Dunsmore, Niamh McCann and Deirdre O’Mahony.

بيت الذاكرة / House of Memory,  2022 - present, VR still. Courtesy of the artist.