Dr Helyer is awarded a fully funded six-week residency with Messums Creative at The Old Post Office in Lowestoft, a refurbished new arts complex on the most easterly point of the UK. This will be followed by a solo exhibition at Orange Regional Gallery in 2027.

Dr. Nigel Helyer is an internationally prominent sculptor and sound artist, whose interdisciplinary practice combines art and science to embrace our social, cultural and physical environments. He brings these concerns together in creative projects that prompt the community to engage with their cultural histories, identity and sense of place, inviting us to examine the abstract conditions of our world and our complex relationships to it.

The 2026 selection panel included:

• Aida Tomescu, Artist and Guest Judge

• Johnny Messum, Director Messums

• Bradley Hammond, Director Orange Regional Gallery

• Claudia Milburn, Director of Programming, Messums

• Belinda Hungerford, Curator and Exhibition Coordinator, Orange Regional Gallery

Looking at the submissions for ‘Full Circle’, I enjoyed the great diversity, the very different media and approaches. I was attracted by the rigorous approach and consistency of Nigel Helyer’s work, its intelligence and the complexity of his proposal - Aida Tomescu, Guest Judge