Pink Loudspeaker • Issue #81
Weekly listings of UK and Irish sound art (05–11 May 2025)
Pink Loudspeaker is your definitive guide to contemporary sound art in the British Isles.
This edition covers all events that can be experienced across the UK and Ireland for the week of Monday 5th to Sunday 11th May 2025. Scroll down for details on eighty-two sonic artworks, exhibitions, performances, workshops, and events across the UK and Ireland taking place this week.
In Issue #81 we cover perpetual analogue looping, conjuring atmospheric histories through sound, the black sonic, decolonial listening, media preservation as resistance, VLF radio wave receivers, lightning strike data, sonic storm chasing, teenage punk gigs, river healing, glowing sculptural forms, biosonified plant rhythms, and more…
pinkloudspeaker.substack.com
Instagram: @soundartsuk
Bluesky: @soundartsuk
Ann Hamilton - We Will Sing
Bradford 2025
📍 Salts Mill, Bradford
🗓️ 03 May – 02 Nov 2025
Over the last forty years American artist Ann Hamilton has developed an artistic practice which centres the present moment and the sensorial qualities of perception. Her site-responsive installations are reknowned for their vast scales, employing a range of multi-sensorial materials, sculptural forms, and media. Sonic technologies and multi-channel sound systems often play a large role in Hamilton’s work alongside textiles, performance, text, and tactile elements. Commissioned for the Bradford 2025 programme as part of the city’s current UK City of Culture status, this new work is a welcome return for Hamilton to UK audiences after many years away. It will be the artist’s first major UK commission for over three decades, since mneme, her 1994 solo exhibition at Tate Liverpool where ethereal voices echoed around the reverberant gallery via hand-cranked turntables.
This new commission, entitled We Will Sing, also features the use of turntables and the voice, and fills the entire top floor of Salts Mill, formerly one of the world’s largest textiles factories. Six record players are distributed throughout the space, each fitted with custom hardware and electronics which allow the tone arms to recue automatically, enabling perpetual analogue looping. Sounds are diffused through vintage acoustic horns distributed throughout the space. Like with many of her previous works, in We Will Sing, Hamilton uses the voice to evoke memories of the past, conjuring an atmospheric history of a site through sound.
Experience Ann Hamilton’s We Will Sing at Salts Mill, Bradford until Sunday 2nd November 2025.
bradford2025.co.uk
annhamiltonstudio.com
saltsmill.org.uk
Resounding Diasporic Sonic Worlds: Archives of Music, Resistance and Community
📍 The NewBridge Project, Newcastle
🗓️ 10 May – 19 July 2025
Opening this Saturday at Newcastle’s The NewBridge Project is Resounding Diasporic Sonic Worlds: Archives of Music, Resistance and Community. This new exhibition has been curated by cultural historian Ellie Armon Azoulay whose recent research has focused on archival materials from diasporic communities, examining the role of sonic media in liberation and resistance movements. Some of this research is on display in exhibited works such as the Black Feminist Vernacular Sounds, a collection of archival sound recordings, photography, and moving image from female Black music collectors from the African diaspora. The collection includes materials from Zora Neale Hurston, an ethnographer who spent decades researching and documenting the black sonic practices and folklore of the American South, from as early as the 1920s. The Black Feminist Vernacular Sounds positions field recording and archival sound from the perspective of Black women, a demographic who are particularly under-represented within the canon and contemporary practices. This is important research, which challenges current dominant ideologies and lineages of sonic arts.
Also on display is The Palestinian Sound Archive, a nomadic archive of musical artefacts from historic Palestine curated by Mo’min Swaitat of the Majazz Project. The project explores decolonial listening and considers media preseveration as an act of resistance. For the Resounding Diasporic Sonic Worlds exhibition, the archive will thematically focus on memories and connections to the city of Jenin in the West Bank, Swaitat’s hometown and a symbol of Palestinian resistance. In addition to the installation, Listening is Resistance, a listening session and discussion hosted by Mo’min Swaitat will take place on Saturday 10th May.
A preview for Resounding Diasporic Sonic Worlds takes place The NewBridge Project, Newcastle on Friday 9th May. The exhibition runs from Saturday 10th May until Saturday 19th July 2025.
thenewbridgeproject.com
majazzproject.com
instagram.com/ellie_aa
Mishka Henner & Emily Speed – Energy House 2.0
📍 Castlefield Gallery, Manchester
🗓️ 04 May – 20 July 2025
Manchester’s Castlefield Gallery. presents Energy House 2.0, a two-person show from artists Mishka Henner and Emily Speed. Both artists have been in residence for the last eighteen months at the University of Salford, working within the environmental test chambers of the university’s Energy House Labs.
Mishka Henner, a Belgian, Manchester-based artist works in a range of media, often with found photography and digital media to comment on communication infrastructure, online data, and the peculiarities of image production. Sound has featured in some of Henner’s recent works and for Energy House 2.0, Henner presents The Conductor, a work developed whilst in residence with the help of a team of scientists, acoustics engineers, sound artists, musicians, and costumiers. Originally presented as a live performance at Salford’s Sounds From the Other City Festival last year, The Conductor now finds its form as a sound and video installation. The work sources live data from Blitzortung, a network of thousands of VLF radio wave receivers charting global incidents of lightning strikes. The installation converts this data in real-time into the form of a graphic score. This in turn triggers the sounds of various percussion instruments in an act of sonic storm chasing, making this mass of climate data perceivable to the body one beat at a time.
Energy House 2.0 by Mishka Henner and Emily Speed runs at Manchester’s Castlefield Gallery until Sunday 20th July 2025.
castlefieldgallery.co.uk
mishkahenner.com
emilyspeed.co.uk
gobscure – you have already survived
📍 ARC, Stockton-on-Tees
🗓️ 25 Apr – 30 May 2025
gobscure is the long-running artistic project of Newcastle-based artist Sean Burn. Burn is a self-taught practioner and self-proclaimed outsider artist whose work spans many forms across multiple genre boundaries. Active internationally for many decades, Burn’s practice encompasses visual art, theatrical plays, poetry, live performance, photography, zines, and sound installation. Engaging with complex themes and drawing upon their lived experience of disability and homelessness to advocate for these communities, gobscure’s work presents authentic portrayals of survival and resistance. you have already survived, their current solo exhibition at ARC in Teesside combines many of these elements to weave a narrative of persistence through adversity, uniting the seemingly disparate themes of teenage punk gigs, healing, and the River Usk. Expect paper installations, banners, photography, and a detailed soundscape composition with field recordings from Welsh riverbanks.
gobscure’s you have already survived runs at Stockton-on-Tees’ ARC until Friday 30th May 2025. A live theatrical event (also titled you have already survived) takes places at ARC on Friday 9th May.
arconline.co.uk
gobscure.wixsite.com
ORIGIN + A Field Hospital for Eco-Anxiety
📍 Dunham Massey, Altrincham
🗓️ 03 May – 02 November 2025
For the next six months the National Trust’s Dunham Massey estate in Greater Manchester will host two innovative immersive artworks. Both of these artworks tackle environmental themes from a restorative angle, from within the context of the heritage site.
ORIGIN is a sound and light installation created by A Right/Left Project, the creative collaboration between artists Stephen Dobbie and Colin Nightingale. Dobbie and Nightingale met whilst working with immersive theatre company Punchdrunk and for the last six years the pair have been deconstructing traditional musical formats into non-linear spatialised sonic experiences. ORIGIN is described by its creators as a deep listening experience which allows visitors to re-consider their relationship to the environment. The installation is set inside a darkened room within the estate, fitted with glowing sculptural forms and a custom d&b sound system. Visitors are encouraged to get comfy and lie down on the mats provided to notice the subtle changes in the room’s enveloping lights and sounds. The soundtrack includes field recordings from the site, music from composer Toby Young, and poetic responses from local youth participants.
Situated in the estate’s Orangery is A Field Hospital for Eco-Anxiety, a new site-responsive work created by Edible Bus Stop and Not Here to be Liked, two socially-led, environmentally-focused design studios. The installation is intended to create a restorative atmosphere, addressing the emotional impact of climate grief and environmental anxiety. The work features an ambient sound composition created by sound artist Justin Wiggan using plant data. Through the process of biosonification, the internal electrical transmissions of biological matter are detected and converted into sound. Wiggan has created rhythms from the signals of three plants found in the Orangery, and integrated these rhythms into a gentle soundscape composition.
ORIGIN and A Field Hospital for Eco-Anxiety can both be experienced at the National Trust’s Dunham Massey estate daily until Sunday 2nd November 2025.
nationaltrust.org.uk
arightleftproject.com
theediblebusstop.com
notheretobeliked.studio
internalgarden.info
An international recommendation:
Hear Here
📍 various venues, Leuven, Belgium
🗓️ 24 April – 09 June 2025
Hear Here is a city-wide sound art festival currently taking place in the Belgian city of Leuven. Our focus is of course on UK and Irish events and we don’t want to make a habit of covering international events as we have enough to cover in our own shores but as the journey from London to Leuven is only 2.5 hours via the Eurostar we thought we would make an exception. After its launch in 2022, Hear Here is back for a second edition with another ambitious survey of contemporary sound art led by curator Gilles Helsen. Helsen is the head of sound at STUK, formerly the artistic coordinator at the Klankenbos sonic sculpture park, and also writes the Belgian sound art blog
.
Fifteen sound installations are currently exhibited in heritage sites across the city. The diverse programme includes historic works from some of the pioneering artists of the genre such as: Dick Raaijmakers’ Ideofoon I (1970), an iconic kinetic artwork which uses loudspeakers to vibrate steel balls and glass tubes; and Christina Kubisch’s The Conference of the Trees (1988), which reveals the hidden sounds of bonsai trees through conductive materials and bespoke electromagnetic headphones.
The programme features installations from Turner Prize winning Scottish sound artist Susan Philipsz and Irish sculptor Lucy Andrews, alongside an array of international artists Adam Basanta, Budhaditya Chattopadhyay, Rudy Decelière, Mariska De Groot, Jonáš Gruska, Aernoudt Jacobs, Anouk Kellner, Anri Sala, Franziska Windisch, Edwin van der Heide, and Els Viaene.
Hear Here runs in venues across the Belgian city of Leuven until 9th June 2025.
Opportunities
• Black Obsidian Sound System, the Turner Prize nominated arts/activist collective based in London, are seeking new members. There is a current call for Black queer, trans, and non-binary people interested in contributing to the group’s community-led work. Deadline: 11th May 2025. instagram.com/blackobsidian_soundsystem
• The newly-launched Sound + Environment Research Group at Newcastle University is seeking papers, workshops and artwork contributions for its inaugural symposium in September 2025. Deadline: 29th May 2025. blogs.ncl.ac.uk/sound-environment
Full listings
Everything on this week: 5th–11th May 2025
Below are over eighty sound art exhibitions, events, performances, public lectures, and workshops taking place across the UK and Ireland this week. Events and exhibitions are sorted by closing date. Opening hours may vary so please check with venues before venturing out! All London events are grouped together at the top, scroll down for events for all other locations across the UK and Ireland.
🔊 LONDON LISTINGS 🔊
Dawn Chorus Walk at Walthamstow Wetlands
📍 Walthamstow Wetlands, London
🗓️ 07 May 2025
LCC/CRiSAP Sound Arts Lecture Series: Paul Abbott
📍 LCC, London / online
🗓️ 08 May 2025
exe.hail
📍 Candid Arts Gallery, London
🗓️ 10 May 2025
Sonic Activation: Abbas Zahedi – Begin Again
Tate Modern: Celebrating 25 Years
📍Tate Modern, London
🗓️ 10 May 2025
María Magdalena Campos-Pons – I Am Soil. My Tears Are Water
Tate Modern: Celebrating 25 Years
📍Tate Modern, London
🗓️ 10 May 2025
Aural Poetics / Convivialities
📍 TACO!, London
🗓️ 09–10 May 2025
R.I.P. Germain – Anti-Blackness Is Bad, Even The Parts That We Like
📍 Cabinet, London
🗓️ 14 March – 10 May 2025
Petulia Mattioli – Site For Sound: Vision, Disrupted
📍 Copeland Park, London
🗓️ 08–11 May 2025
The Engine Room 2025: International Sound Art Exhibition
📍 Morley Gallery, London
🗓️ 28 April – 16 May 2025
Wild Uploaded, Prequel
📍 ASC Gallery, London
🗓️ 01–18 May 2025
Ella Wong – Drifting Clouds / Sound of Sea
Shifting Grounds
📍 Hypha Gallery 2 Sugar House Island, Newham, London
🗓️ 18 April – 24 May 2025
Pete Gomes – Does the River Listen to the Trees?
In House: Ree Bradley and Pete Gomes
📍 Studio Voltaire, London
🗓️ 02 April – 25 May 2025
Send & Receive
📍 Hypha Gallery 1 Sugar House Island, Newham, London
🗓️ 18 April – 25 May 2025
Isobelle Munckton - Hive
Who Runs the World
📍 The Bomb Factory Art Foundation, London
🗓️ 08 May – 01 June 2025
Nora Turato – pool7
📍 ICA, London
🗓️ 09 April – 08 Jun 2025
Fari Bradley – PSA – Public Service Announcement
Fashioning Frequencies
📍 London College of Fashion, London
🗓️ 25 April – 21 June 2025
Nazanin Noori – THE ECHO OF PROTEST IS DISTANT TO THE PROTEST
📍 Auto Italia, London
🗓️ 10 April – 22 June 2025
You Make Me Feel (Jeanie Crystal, Zein Majali & Emily Pop)
📍 Southwark Park Galleries, London
🗓️ 05 April – 29 June 2025
Nassim Azarzar – Hayat al Noujoum / La vie des Étoiles
📍 The Showroom, London
🗓️ 26 July 2024 – 07 July 2025
Black Sound London: The Story of British Black Music
📍 Barbican Library, London
🗓️ 10 March – 19 July 2025
Ed Atkins
📍 Tate Britain, London
🗓️ 02 April – 25 August 2025
Eija-Liisa Ahtila – Horizontal–Vaakasuora
The Power of Trees
📍 Kew Gardens, London
🗓️ 12 April – 14 September 2025
Marshmallow Laser Feast – Of The Oak
📍 Kew Gardens, London
🗓️ 03 May – 28 September 2025
Christine Sun Kim & Thomas Mader – 1880 THAT
📍 Wellcome Collection, London
🗓️ 17 April – 16 Nov 2025
María Magdalena Campos-Pons and Neil Leonard
📍 Tate Modern, London
🗓️ 10 March – 19 October 2025
Abbas Zahedi – Begin Again
Gathering Ground
📍Tate Modern, London
🗓️ 29 January 2025 – 04 January 2026
Felix Taylor - Hydraulis!
Secrets of the Thames
📍 London Museum Docklands
🗓️ 04 April 2025 – 01 March 2026
🔊 LISTINGS FOR ALL OTHER CITIES 🔊
Dawn Chorus at Cossington Meadows
📍 Cossington Meadows, Leicestershire
🗓️ 06 May 2025
Sound Walk Zine Making workshop with Delilah Sykes
📍 Left Bank, Leeds
🗓️ 07 May 2025
Burning Bridges: The Story of Paul Burwell + in-conversation session
📍 Full of Noises, Barrow-in-Furness
🗓️ 07 May 2025
Tilly Ingram – The Hide
Brighton Festival
📍 various venues, Brighton
🗓️ 04–07 May 2025
Karis Petty – Nature Unseen
Brighton Festival
📍 Fabrica, Brighton
🗓️ 08 May 2025
Post-Rave Britain Archive Roadshow
Brighton Festival
📍 Green Door Store, Brighton
🗓️ 08 May 2025
Laurie O’Dowd – Affairs of the Current
📍 CCA Glasgow, Glasgow
🗓️ 08 May 2025
gobscure – you have already survived [performance]
📍 ARC, Stockton on Tees
🗓️ 09 May 2025
Robert Coleman – City Sounds Workshop
📍 Cityside Retail & Leisure Park, Belfast
🗓️ 10 May 2025
Adult Dawn Chorus Walk (with breakfast)
📍 College Lake, Tring, Buckinghamshire
🗓️ 10 May 2025
Tom Harris + Juliana Day sculptural sound performance
Creative Peaks Festival
📍 The Watts Russell Arms, Hopedale, Peak District
🗓️ 09–10 May 2025
Listening is Resistance
📍 The NewBridge Project, Newcastle
🗓️ 10 May 2025
Jason Singh – Cyd-Wrando (Listen Together): A Dialogue Between Land and Sea
📍 The Bay of Colwyn, Wales
🗓️ 10 May 2025
Max Cooper – Lattice 3D/AV
Brighton Festival
📍 Brighton Dome, Brighton
🗓️ 10 May 2025
Sonic Visions: Rewind. Step Forward
📍 Atlas Cinema, London
🗓️ 11 May 2025
All Ears
Jaki Irvine: Ssh Ow
📍 De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill-on-Sea
🗓️ 11 May 2025
Thameside Dawn Chorus Walk
📍 Thameside Nature Discovery Park, Stanford-Le-Hope, Essex
🗓️ 11 May 2025
Sound! Soundtrack Film Festival
📍 Regional Cultural Centre, Letterkenny, Co. Donegal, Ireland
🗓️ 08–11 May 2025
Christopher Kulendran Thomas – Safe Zone
📍 FACT, Liverpool
🗓️ 21 Feb – 11 May 2025
Martin Osman – Free Abel
Reject Reflect Reclaim
📍Beecroft Art Gallery, Southend
🗓️ 22 February – 11 May 2025
Luke Jerram – Helios
📍 Ickworth Estate, Suffolk
🗓️ 02–11 May 2025
Henna Asikainen – Lintukoto/Haven
📍 Peter Scott Gallery, Lancaster
🗓️ 24 March – 16 May 2025
Kaya Erdinç & Ellie Ford – [silent] tone moving in sequence [sjtill]
📍 Listen Gallery, Glasgow
🗓️ 09–22 May 2025
Jaki Irvine: Ssh Ow
📍 De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill-on-Sea
🗓️ 22 Feb – 26 May 2025
gobscure – you have already survived [exhibition]
📍 ARC, Stockton-on-Tees
🗓️ 25 Apr – 30 May 2025
Mike Collier
Chroma
📍 Redcar Contemporary, Redcar
🗓️ 08–31 May 2025
Leap Then Look – Play Interact Explore
📍 BALTIC, Gateshead
🗓️ 12 Oct 2024 – 01 Jun 2025
See Here Now: Art in a Time of Urgency
📍 Grizedale, Lake District
🗓️ 04 April – 08 June 2025
Imran Perretta – A Riot In Three Acts
📍 HOME, Manchester
🗓️ 22 Feb – 08 June 2025
Sound and Silence: An Exhibition of Contemporary Bells
📍 MAKE Southwest, Bovey Tracey
🗓️ 22 March – 14 June 2025
Prototypes for Cyborgs – A Space Opera
📍 Regional Cultural Centre, Letterkenny, Co. Donegal, Ireland
🗓️ 12 April – 14 June 2025
Phil Coy – Sixty Beats Per Minute
📍 St George's Church, Ramsgate
🗓️ 02 May – 29 June 2025
In Between Time – BIRD
📍 Tyntesfield, Bristol
🗓️ 02 May –29 June 2025
Paul Nataraj – Blue and White Through Thick and Thin
Rovers – 150 Years
📍 Blackburn Museum and Art Gallery, Blackburn
🗓️ 09 April – June 2025
Colin Woods - I Just Called
📍 Belfast (various libraries)
🗓️ Oct 2024 – June 2025
James Bulley – The Mother Goose Series
📍 The Glasshouse, Gateshead
🗓️ 23 April – July 2025
Resounding Diasporic Sonic Worlds: Archives of Music, Resistance and Community
📍 The NewBridge Project, Newcastle
🗓️ 10 May – 19 July 2025
Mishka Henner & Emily Speed – Energy House 2.0
📍 Castlefield Gallery, Manchester
🗓️ 04 May – 20 July 2025
Martin Barraud – Echoes – Halo of the South
📍 Marina Curve, Dover
🗓️ 16 April – summer 2025
Mary Hooper – The Sun Feeds the Wind
📍 Hastings Contemporary, Hastings
🗓️ 29 March – 14 Sept 2025
The Secret Lives of Bottle of Notes: Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen📍 MIMA, Middlesbrough
🗓️ 14 March – 05 October 2025
Maureen Jordan – On The Lookout
📍 The Himalayan Garden and Sculpture Park, Yorkshire
🗓️ 08 April – 02 November 2025
Ann Hamilton - We Will Sing
Bradford 2025
📍 Salts Mill, Bradford
🗓️ 03 May – 02 Nov 2025
ORIGIN
📍 Dunham Massey, Altrincham
🗓️ 03 May – 02 November 2025
A Field Hospital for Eco-Anxiety
📍 Dunham Massey, Altrincham
🗓️ 03 May – 02 November 2025
Sophie Cooper & Babs Smith – Immersive Greenbooth
📍 Greenbooth Reservoir, Rochdale
🗓️ 03 May – 04 Nov 2025
Lizzie King – Connecting the Tree and the Foot
Fragments of Time
📍 Salford Museum & Art Gallery, Salford
🗓️ 22 March – 21 Dec 2025
Resonant Forms
📍 The Hepworth, Wakefield
🗓️ 08 March 2025 – January 2026
Marshmallow Laser Feast – You:Matter
📍 National Science and Media Museum, Bradford
🗓️ 03 April 2025 – 22 February 2026
Soundmarks York
📍 DIG, York
🗓️ on-going
Jamie Jenkinson – Nattering
📍 Millom Library, Cumbria
🗓️ on-going
Susan Philipsz - By Sound Near Seawall
📍 Whitehaven Harbour, Cumbria
🗓️ on-going
SoundEscapes
📍 Sainsbury Centre, Norwich
🗓️ 06 Dec 2024 – on-going
Justin Wiggin – Echo Point
📍 Royal Cornwall Hospital, Truro
🗓️ 20 January 2025 – on-going
Glasgow Requiem: The Walk
📍 St. Mungo’s RC Church, Glasgow
🗓️ 17 April 2025 – 2028
These listings are created by the Sound Arts UK team in an effort to support the UK sonic arts community and to help bring the artform to a wider audience. Our focus is to cover the work of under-represented artists. If you find these listings useful please share!
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Thank you for reading! 🔊