KEEPERS AND TRANSMITTERS
— Sharon Phelan
7 February – 2 May 2026
“Language is fossil poetry. As the limestone of the continent consists of infinite masses of the shells of animalcules, so language is made up of images, or tropes, which now, in their secondary use, have long ceased to remind us of their poetic origin.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Poet
Sharon Phelan’s practice attempts to activate a correspondence between language, objects and events, where a certain kind of sonic imagination might be articulated. Her installations posit themselves as field recordings — translating, transforming or reframing natural phenomena like geological fossils preserving ancient life.
Drawn to the suggestive potential of field recording by other means than the microphone, Keepers and Transmitters presents a group of encrypted sounds in the form of sculptural works, found poems and drawings. From otoliths to oscilloscopes to very low frequency receivers, these sonic images open up alternate ways of listening, with sound in mind and mind in sound, and where birch is the first letter of the alphabet.
A series of live performances and a publication will mark the closing of the exhibition.Sharon Phelan is an artist whose work spans performance, installation, writing and composition. With specific attention to sound, voice, resonance and poetics of place, her practice engages with ways of listening, field recording, and the bodily movement of language. She is particularly interested in ways of knowing sound and listening from a gendered and marginal perspective. Her work often draws on the physicality of sound through the tracing and re-tracing of sonic artefacts and interference patterns. Recent group exhibitions and solo performances include: Metronome, The National Concert Hall (2025); RURAL LIFE 1.0, Brown Mountain Diamond (2025); The School of Wild Listening (2025); Platform Commissions, The Dock (2024); University of Limerick Electronic Music Studio (2024); 40th EVA International (2023); Earth Rising, Irish Museum of Modern Art (2023).
www.soundsweep.info