The Listening Group
The Listening Group is Mermaid Arts Centre’s occasional sonic art gathering, inviting artists working with sound to share new work, influences and discoveries with peers, sound art devotees and those keen to discover more. Each edition invites an artist to curate a 90 minute programme of audio works, which may include examples of their own work, pieces that have shaped their practice, or work in progress.
Previous editions
#5 Guardian Angel (1880) / Sven Anderson
Artist, researcher and educator Sven Anderson revisits a body of work developed through the projects 'Collection' (commissioned by the OPW for Glebe House and Gallery in 2021) and 'This Voice' (produced for Solstice Arts Centre in 2022). Beginning with opera recordings from the collection of the late painter Derek Hill, these projects explore tensions that arise when the voice is transformed into sonic material, unfolding through an outdoor sound installation, a double-vinyl LP, a gallery-based sound installation, large-scale prints, found photographs, and long-forgotten liner notes.
#4 Listening Across Tenses / Christopher Steenson 23 February 2025
Steenson shares a series of sound-based artworks he has created over the past five years. These works, which range from public sound interventions using public infrastructures to fictional broadcasts and site-specific installations, use sound and listening as a conduit for exploring speculative pasts and futures. Steenson explores the relationship between sound, place and memory as a method for communing and imagining within broader social and political contexts of ecological and social rupture.
#3 Reflectors 20 October 2024
Artist David Beattie curated this third edition of our occasional sound art gathering, inviting the audience on a guided walk to explore his 2019 work Reflectors, a permanent Public Artwork that consists of four individually engineered and cast terrazzo sculptures of varying sizes placed along the walkway beside the River Dargle in Bray. Joined by guest artist and educator Dr Sven Anderson, the pair discussed Reflectors and invited the audience to interact with the works during a slow stroll from the meeting point beside the Dargle river to Bray Harbour.
#2 Paulo Post-Future 9 June 2024
The second edition of Mermaid Arts Centre’s new sound art gathering invited artist Dennis McNulty to reflect on http://alpha60.info, a work created for the 2004 São Paulo Bienal. The event took its title from curator Valerie Connor's concept for Ireland's presentation at the Bienal that year. With guest Tom O'Dea.
#1 The Sonic as a Representation of Place 25 February 2024
Co-curated by sound artists Joseph Young and Anthony Kelly (Farpoint Recordings), the inaugural live listen event featured an exclusive sneak preview of Joseph Young’s forthcoming album ‘Sonic Hauntings in a Big House’, drawn from his recent PhD research project ‘The Ancestors’.
To learn about future events, sign up to Mermaid's mailing list here.