Pink Loudspeaker • Issue #84
Weekly listings of UK and Irish sound art (26 May–01 June 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 26th May to Sunday 1st June 2025. Scroll down for details on over eighty sonic artworks, exhibitions, performances, workshops, and events taking place this week.
In Issue #84 we cover altars of loudspeakers, rhythmic chest beating, sonic restitution, silent conservation, snaking magnetic tape loops, listening positionality, recontextualising the English musical canon, deconstructed musical instruments, automated sonic sculptures, vocal agency, ‘waulking songs’, bodily decomposition, mounds of sculptural detritus, tidal compositions, real-time buoy data, self-playing celtic harps, and much more…
pinkloudspeaker.substack.com
Instagram: @soundartsuk
Bluesky: @soundartsuk
Soft Power
📍 Standalone, London
🗓️ 30 May – 27 June 2025
New gallery Standalone will launch this weekend as part of Dalston's new creative hub 160DL Studios. The gallery will run as an artist-led space and operate with a low-cost subscription-based membership system. Soft Power is the gallery’s first exhibition which will run for the next four weeks, presenting works from an international line-up of artists. At the centre of the exhibition is Vivienne Griffin’s harp automaton, The New Note. Griffin is a Dublin-born artist based between London and New York and works across a vast range of media and technologies. They describe their practice as “anti-disciplinary” and recent works have incorporated sculpture, moving image, performance, algorithms, and sonic elements. The New Note features a heavily augmented Celtic cláirseach harp, fitted with a mass of cables, electronics, microcontrollers, motors, and 3D printed elements. The motorised harp follows a predetermined score and self-plays in a deliberately mechnical and discordant manner, commenting on musical tradition, national identity, and technological development.
“The New Note plays similarly with function and expectation. In the place of Irish mystical mythology, we witness the instrument being, as Vivienne put it, brutalised. Instead of a familiar and comforting harmony, we get dissonance. There is a destructive character to this, certainly, but the act also cleaves a space for a new and more heterogeneous kind of Irishness. It gives us an image of Ireland that can widen to include today's technological present. This moves away from the easy comfort of nationalism- growing radically and unpredictably open to the wider world.” – Rebecca O' Dwyer
Soft Power opens at London’s Standalone gallery on Friday 30th May and runs until Friday 27th June 2025.
standalonegallery.com
viviennegriffin.com
Your Ears Later Will Know to Listen
📍 Nottingham Contemporary, Nottingham
🗓️ 31 May – 07 Sept 2025
Opening this weekend at Nottingham Contemporary is Your Ears Later Will Know to Listen, a major group exhibition exploring the evocative nature of sound and its cultural resonances. The show examines the ways in which sound acts as a carrier of information, and the many roles sound plays in documenting and representing histories, cultures, and identities. The exhibition presents a number of work that address questions such as: what does it mean to listen to the past? The show has been co-curated by Nottingham Contemporary alongside Andrea Zarza Canova, a curator and researcher with a specialism in archival ethnographic sound recordings, and a decade of experience working at the British Library Sound Archive. Your Ears Later Will Know to Listen presents works from thirteen artists in a range of media, including multi-channel sound installations, sculptures, audiovisual works, archival audio, and visual artworks.
Pakistani artist Zahra Malkani will present her shrine-like Sada Sada sound installation at the exhibition. The work was shown at Malkani’s debut solo exhibition at Konsthall C gallery in Stockholm earlier this year. The work features an altar of stacked loudspeakers, acting as a lament to the coastal areas of southern Pakistan which have been heavily impacted by environmental destruction, extreme weather, conflict, and dispossession. The work pairs environmental field recordings with intimate documentation of sung lullabies and mourning rituals such as Matam, the rhythmic act of chest beating.
Nottingham Contemporary have commissioned three new works for this exhibition, including a 14-channel sound installation by artist and musician Satch Hoyt. Hoyt will have one of the gallery’s rooms to himself, showcasing his new sound installation alongside a number of paintings and visual scores described by the artist as “sonic cartographies.” For over twenty-five years Hoyt has explored the sonic cultures of the African diaspora, enslavement, and resistance, through a range of sonic and visual media. Hoyt’s new installation Un-Muting Beyond Misspelt Borders centres around musical motifs performed on antique African instruments from the British Museum’s collection. The artist was granted permission to play and record these artifacts, objects that otherwise lay unheard in the archives. The work integrates a range of African and European instruments as well as archival wax cylinder recordings from the Berlin Phonogramm-Archiv. The artist describes the work as an act of “sonic restitution”, designed to challenge the silent conservation standards and colonial representations of archival sounds and musical instruments held in Western collections.
“From the melodies that accompanied enslaved peoples across oceans to the imagined soundtrack of Afro-futuristic journeys, Hoyt’s practice works to ‘un-mute’ sound collections captured during the European colonial period, linking anthropological recordings to the sounds of contemporary Black culture.” – Biennale of Sydney
South African artist Simnikiwe Buhlungu will present Same-ing the Same Sames, a sound installation in the form of a long magnetic tape loop which snakes itself through an analogue reel-to-reel tape machine and throughout the gallery space. In this work Buhlungu uses the tape machine to reflect upon the roles such machines have played in Western ethnographic representations of African cultures.
Xwélmexw artist and scholar Dylan Robinson was commissioned to create new work and will present a site-specific piece entitled here, inside, kwetxwí:lem. Robinson’s writings imagine sound through a decolonial perspective, exploring links between settler colonialism and indigenous sonic practices. His influential monograph Hungry Listening stresses the importance of ‘listening positionality’ – the notion that our own privileges, biases, and abilities impact our ability to listen. This new commission for Nottingham Contemporary further explores these themes, encouraging visitors to question their relationships to what it is that is heard. here, inside, kwetxwí:lem is a tripdych sound installation split across three transitional spaces located near the gallery’s entrance, blurring the boundaries between the museum and the outside world. A central aspect of the work provides a recontextualisation of the English musical canon by Cree composer Andrew Balfour. Historic choral hymns written by Thomas Tallis and Henry Purcell have been translated into Anishinaabemowin and Cree, two North American indigenous languages, and were performed by the Musica Intima vocal ensemble. In another space, the recorded voice of artist and writer Lisa Ravensbergen addresses visitors directly with poetic phrases written by Robinson such as “how is your listening now?” designed to instigate reflection upon one’s current listening experience.
Your Ears Later Will Know to Listen opens at Nottingham Contemporary on Saturday 31st May and runs until Sunday 7th Sept 2025.
nottinghamcontemporary.org
andreazarza.com
zahramalkani.com
satchhoyt.art
instagram.com/simnikiwebuhlungu
dylanrobinson.ca
Fan Bangyu & Ellis Berwick – CANON(s)
📍 Small-Time Projects, London
🗓️ 31 May – 14 June 2025
CANON(s) is one of three shows opening this weekend at Farringdon project space Small-Time Projects. This duo show curated by Cameron McClellan presents an appropriate pairing of two contemporary artists working with sound and discarded materials. Chinese-born London-based interdisciplinary artist and musician Fan Bangyu produces mixed media installations and sculptural works which feature deconstructed and repurposed acoustic musical instruments and tools. Sculptural elements are often accompanied with analogue technologies such as reel-to-reel tape machines, and audio compositions diffused via loudspeaker arrays. London artist and engineer Ellis Berwick fabricates pneumatic instruments, often reconfiguring salvaged heritage pipe organs into automated sonic sculptures. For CANON(s), Berwick will present an ensemble of automata, made from vintage woodwind and brass instruments. Both artists will contribute a number of newly commissioned and recent artworks to the show, which will all co-exist within a communal sonic field.
CANON(s) by Fan Bangyu and Ellis Berwick runs at London’s Small-Time Projects from Saturday 31st May until Saturday 14th June 2025.
instagram.com/smalltimeproject_stp
fanbangyu.com
instagram.com/a_village_idiot
My Voice is a Resting Place
📍 Listen Gallery, Glasgow
🗓️ 31 May – 01 June 2025
Glasgow’s Listen Gallery have recently moved to a new location, upgrading to a larger space, and are now situated in a more central location just north of the River Clyde. The gallery’s first exhibition in their new space showcases sound, installation, and drawings from artists Eothen Stearn, gentian rhosa and Nicola Singh. Singh utilises sound and the voice to explore representations and agency of the female body; Stearn’s recent practice has combined sound with textiles, drawing inspiration from the Scottish tradition of waulking songs; and rhosa’s recent exhibition Body De— at Glasgow’s Market Gallery explored themes of grief and bodily decomposition through mounds of sculptural detritus, text, and cassette tape loops.
The voice is an integral part of all of these artists’ practice, who despite working in very different ways, all have found ways of using their voices in cyclical and reptitive manners. The show, entitled My Voice is a Resting Place, has been curated by Mattie May Roberts, who has identified these lines of connection between the artists and presents a programme that looks to uncover some of the roles that the voice can play in the practices of devotion, labour, and grief.
“It is an invitation to listen and think through these ideas together, in the face of continued global, structural violences that constantly challenge our capacity for grief, healing, connection and resistance.” – Mattie May Roberts
My Voice is a Resting Place takes place at Glasgow’s Listen Gallery over the weekend of Saturday 31st May and Sunday 1st June 2025.
listengallery.co.uk
eothenstearn.com
gentianrhosa.com
nicolasingh.co.uk
Adam Gibney – Tidal Composition 1: Fall and Rise
📍 Balbriggan Library, Co. Dublin
🗓️ 15 May – 05 June 2025
Adam Gibney describes his current public art project Tidal Composition as “a technological bridge between the Irish Sea and our inner emotional landscapes,” drawing parallels between the rhythmic nature of the tidal cycles and the fluctuations of one’s mental health. An exhibition entitled Fall and Rise is currently on show at the Balbriggan Library in County Dublin. At the heart of Gibney’s project are the S.A.L.I.E. (Sound and Light Interactive Emitter) devices. These retro-styled sound and light instruments gather real-time data from marine buoys situated in the Irish Sea, converting these signals into a meditative sound and light experience. For the next two weeks, visitors in the Dublin area can borrow S.A.L.I.E. machines from the Balbriggan Library. By bringing the devices into one’s home, one can gain a greater intimacy with the fluctuations of the local sea conditions and reflect upon the movements of one’s own inner currents.
Adam Gibney’s Tidal Composition 1: Fall and Rise exhibition can be experienced at Balbriggan Library in County Dublin until Saturday 5th June 2025. S.A.L.I.E. devices can be borrowed from the same location whilst the exhibition is open.
Opportunities
• 101 Outdoor Arts (Reading, UK) will host the Sound and the Outdoors symposium on 3rd June 2025. The all-day event will feature presentations from a range of artists and practioners working with sound outside of typical gallery and venue environments. Tickets (£20/£10) can be purchased from the 101 website. To apply fill in the online form on the 101 website. 101outdoorarts.com
• Sound Thought are collaborating with the Glasgow Science Festival for a second year. The collective will curate another installation at the Kibble Palace in the city’s historic botanic gardens in June 2025 and are seeking audio contributions for their multi-channel soundwork. Deadline: Sunday 8th June 2025. soundthought.co.uk + instagram.com/sound_thought
• Cockpit Studios in Deptford currently have an open call for sound artists to present performances and workshops for their Dialogues of Space event series. The venue are seeking artists from south-east London (prioritising artists based in Lewisham, Greenwich, Peckham, and Camberwell). Deadline: Friday 16th June 2025. instagram.com/springcafecockpit
• The UK’s long-running Sonic Arts Forum currently has an open call for participation in an event on 15th November 2025 at the Swansea College of Art. The call is seeking individuals who are interested in presenting their work in person and receiving feedback in a friendly and supportive environment. A good opportunity to network but travel and accommodation will not be covered by the host organisation. Deadline: Friday 15th August 2025. facebook.com/groups/sonicarts/
Full listings
Everything on this week: 26th May to 1st June 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 🔊
A Sonic Journey Through a Recipe: Pam Brunton & Matthew Herbert
📍 British Library, London
🗓️ 27 May 2025
Sound Art Open Mic #23: Experiments With Sound
📍 Avalon Cafe, London
🗓️ 28 May 2025
LCC/CRiSAP Sound Arts Lecture Series: Ain Bailey
📍 LCC, London / online
🗓️ 29 May 2025
Project Stage
📍 SET Woolwich, London
🗓️ 09–30 May 2025
Isobelle Munckton - Hive
Who Runs the World
📍 The Bomb Factory Art Foundation, London
🗓️ 08 May – 01 June 2025
* featured in Pink Loudspeaker #82
Nora Turato – pool7
📍 ICA, London
🗓️ 09 April – 08 Jun 2025
Fan Bangyu & Ellis Berwick – CANON(s)
📍 Small-Time Projects, London
🗓️ 31 May – 14 June 2025
* featured in Pink Loudspeaker #84
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
* featured in Pink Loudspeaker #77
You Make Me Feel (Jeanie Crystal, Zein Majali & Emily Pop)
📍 Southwark Park Galleries, London
🗓️ 05 April – 29 June 2025
Rebel Radio
📍 Barbican Centre, London
🗓️ 01–30 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
Michaela Yearwood-Dan – No Time for Despair
📍 Hauser & Wirth, London
🗓️ 13 May – 02 August 2025
Darren Emerson – In Pursuit of Repetitive Beats
📍 Barbican, London
🗓️ 22 May – 03 Aug 2025
Ed Atkins
📍 Tate Britain, London
🗓️ 02 April – 25 August 2025
Feel the Sound
📍 Barbican, London
🗓️ 22 May – 31 August 2025
* featured in Pink Loudspeaker #83
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
* featured in Pink Loudspeaker #79
María Magdalena Campos-Pons and Neil Leonard
📍 Tate Modern, London
🗓️ 10 March – 19 October 2025
* featured in Pink Loudspeaker #83
Abbas Zahedi – Begin Again
Gathering Ground
📍Tate Modern, London
🗓️ 29 January 2025 – 04 January 2026
* featured in Pink Loudspeaker #77
Felix Taylor - Hydraulis!
Secrets of the Thames
📍 London Museum Docklands
🗓️ 04 April 2025 – 01 March 2026
🔊 LISTINGS FOR ALL OTHER CITIES 🔊
Jaki Irvine: Ssh Ow
📍 De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill-on-Sea
🗓️ 22 Feb – 26 May 2025
Listen Club #24: Joseph Young – Sonic Hauntology, An Evocation of Place
📍 The Rose Hill, Brighton
🗓️ 28 May 2025
An Evening of Experimental Music and Listening
📍 Unit 2, Ramsgate
🗓️ 29 May 2025
Writing with Sound workshops
📍 Batley Community Centre, Batley
🗓️ 14–30 May 2025
gobscure – you have already survived [exhibition]
📍 ARC, Stockton-on-Tees
🗓️ 25 Apr – 30 May 2025
* featured in Pink Loudspeaker #82
David de la Haye – Sonic Pond Dipping at Wallington
📍 Wallington, Northumberland
🗓️ 29–30 May 2025
Working Boys Club – Serving Sounds
📍 Out There Festival, Great Yarmouth
🗓️ 29–31 May 2025
My Voice is a Resting Place
📍 Listen Gallery, Glasgow
🗓️ 30–31 May 2025
* featured in Pink Loudspeaker #84
Mike Collier
Chroma
📍 Redcar Contemporary, Redcar
🗓️ 08–31 May 2025
Kathy Hinde & Jan Hendrickse – Make an Aeolian Harp workshop
📍 Wicken Fen, Cambridgeshire
🗓️ 31 May 2025
Rowland’s Leaving – Same Deep Water As You
📍 PINK, Stockport
🗓️ 31 May 2025
Oram Awards x YSWM: Changing Gear
📍 Gut Level, Sheffield
🗓️ 31 May 2025
Rimski & Handkerchief
📍 Orange Pip Market, Middlesbrough
🗓️ 31 May 2025
Darkfield – Flight
📍 Guildhall Square, Salisbury
🗓️ 24 May - 01 Jun 2025
Leap Then Look – Play Interact Explore
📍 BALTIC, Gateshead
🗓️ 12 Oct 2024 – 01 Jun 2025
Vocalize
Hay Festival
📍 Dairy Meadows, Hay-on-Wye, Wales
🗓️ 22 May – 01 June 2025
* featured in Pink Loudspeaker #83
Adam Gibney – Tidal Composition 1: Fall and Rise
📍 Balbriggan Library, Co. Dublin
🗓️ 15 May – 05 June 2025
* featured in Pink Loudspeaker #84
Andy Cluer – Moorland
📍 Kingsgate Project Space, London
🗓️ 16 May – 07 Jun 2025
* featured in Pink Loudspeaker #82
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
Digital Music & Sound Arts Graduate Show 2025
📍University of Brighton, Brighton
🗓️ 31 May – 10 June 2025
Sound and Silence: An Exhibition of Contemporary Bells
📍 MAKE Southwest, Bovey Tracey
🗓️ 22 March – 14 June 2025
* featured in Pink Loudspeaker #74
Prototypes for Cyborgs – A Space Opera
📍 Regional Cultural Centre, Letterkenny, Co. Donegal, Ireland
🗓️ 12 April – 14 June 2025
* featured in Pink Loudspeaker #82
Justin Wiggan – Echoes of Blossom
Festival of Blossom
📍 Trerice, Newquay
🗓️ 25 May – 14 June 2025
Tape Letters
Bradford 2025
📍 Loading Bay, Bradford
🗓️ 22 May – 15 June 2025
Karen Heald & Susan Matthews – Tsuyu / Plum Rain
In Progress
📍 Tŷ Pawb, Wrexham
🗓️ 09 May – 21 June 2025
Soft Power
📍 Standalone, London
🗓️ 30 May – 27 June 2025
* featured in Pink Loudspeaker #84
Glasgow Requiem: The Walk – communal walks
📍 St. Mungo’s RC Church, Glasgow
🗓️ 03 May – 28 June 2025 (every Saturday at 2pm)
Phil Coy – Sixty Beats Per Minute
📍 St. George's Church, Ramsgate
🗓️ 02 May – 29 June 2025
* featured in Pink Loudspeaker #82
In Between Time – BIRD
📍 Tyntesfield, Bristol
🗓️ 02 May – 29 June 2025
Gary Stewart soundscape installation
Tapestry of Black Britons
📍 Arnolfini, Bristol
🗓️ 09 May – 29 June 2025
Paul Nataraj – Blue and White Through Thick and Thin
Rovers – 150 Years
📍 Blackburn Museum and Art Gallery, Blackburn
🗓️ 09 April – 29 June 2025
Colin Woods - I Just Called
📍 Belfast (various libraries)
🗓️ Oct 2024 – 29 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
* featured in Pink Loudspeaker #81
Mishka Henner & Emily Speed – Energy House 2.0
📍 Castlefield Gallery, Manchester
🗓️ 04 May – 20 July 2025
* featured in Pink Loudspeaker #81
Martin Barraud – Echoes – Halo of the South
📍 Marina Curve, Dover
🗓️ 16 April – summer 2025
Satch Hoyt - Cross Rhythmic Delay
📍 Beam, Nottingham
🗓️ 31 May – 06 September 2025
Your Ears Later Will Know to Listen
📍 Nottingham Contemporary, Nottingham
🗓️ 31 May – 07 Sept 2025
* featured in Pink Loudspeaker #84
Mary Hooper – The Sun Feeds the Wind
📍 Hastings Contemporary, Hastings
🗓️ 29 March – 14 Sept 2025
* featured in Pink Loudspeaker #75
Emma Critchley – Soundings
📍 Tate St Ives, St Ives
🗓️ 24 May – 21 Sept 2025
* featured in Pink Loudspeaker #82
The Secret Lives of Bottle of Notes: Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen📍 MIMA, Middlesbrough
🗓️ 14 March – 05 October 2025
Earth & Sky immersive sound walks
📍 Penistone Hill Country Park
🗓️ 24 May – 12 Oct 2025
* featured in Pink Loudspeaker #83
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
* featured in Pink Loudspeaker #81
ORIGIN
📍 Dunham Massey, Altrincham
🗓️ 03 May – 02 November 2025
* featured in Pink Loudspeaker #81
A Field Hospital for Eco-Anxiety
📍 Dunham Massey, Altrincham
🗓️ 03 May – 02 November 2025
* featured in Pink Loudspeaker #81
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
* featured in Pink Loudspeaker #74
Heather Mullender-Ross – All the Better to Hear You With
📍 Allan Bank, Grasmere, Lake District
🗓️ 01 April – 21 Dec 2025
* featured in Pink Loudspeaker #82
Resonant Forms
📍 The Hepworth, Wakefield
🗓️ 08 March 2025 – January 2026
* featured in Pink Loudspeaker #73
Marshmallow Laser Feast – You:Matter
📍 National Science and Media Museum, Bradford
🗓️ 03 April 2025 – 22 February 2026
Tale Telt: Real Voices Sharing Fantastic Cumbrian Tales
📍 Keswick Museum, Lake District
🗓️ 24 May – summer 2026
Glasgow Requiem: The Walk
📍 St. Mungo’s RC Church, Glasgow
🗓️ 17 April 2025 – 2028
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
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! 🔊