Echo/Locate | Sorcha McNamara at the Linenhall Arts Centre

Event Details

Echo/Locate a solo exhibition, by artist Sorcha McNamara, launching in The Linenhall Arts Centre on Friday, August 15 at 5pm. Exhibition runs until Saturday, September 27.
Echo/Locate is a site-specific installation of new and existing work by Sorcha McNamara.
McNamara’s practice engages with deconstructive methods of painting, framing, language and image-making. She repurposes found materials to create lyrical, fragmented compositions that frequently respond to the spaces they are placed in, while questioning personal and conceptual tensions around craft, manipulation, agency and value.
As a process, echolocation is used by certain animals, as well as blind, visually impaired and sighted people, to map or assess their environment. A way of locating distant or invisible objects by making particular noises and paying attention to the sound waves, or echoes, reflected back to them. A way of reading a room, processing spatial information, determining the shape, position and motion of objects. Adapting this notion to the sense of familiarity one might feel in any given space at any given time, Echo/Locate acts as a kind of interlocutor, questioning the ways in which we gauge our surroundings through tangible, sensuous forms.
Navigating this dynamic between space and feeling, the exhibition design was developed in consultation with Aidan Conway of MARMAR Architects. The installation focuses on disrupting and modifying the space using existing gallery structures, as well as dismantling conventional notions of how an artwork is seen, encountered and appreciated.
Echo/Locate is jointly supported by Mayo County Council Arts Office and The Golden Fleece Award.

About the Artist:
Sorcha McNamara is an artist, originally from Co. Mayo, currently based in Fire Station Artists’ Studios, Dublin. Her work was shortlisted for the 2025 Golden Fleece Award. Current and recent group exhibitions include Green on Red Gallery (2025); VISUAL Carlow Centre for Contemporary Art (2024); Catalyst Arts, Belfast (2024); Draíocht Gallery, Dublin (2023); and The LAB, Dublin (2023). Recent residencies include Leitrim Sculpture Centre (2024); Zaratan Arte Contemporanea, Lisbon (2024); Totaldobze Art Centre, Riga (2022); and Tangent Projects, Barcelona (2021). Past solo projects include Fathomless Arms, Ballina Arts Centre (2023); (dis)attachments, The Hyde Bridge Gallery (2022); and Readymade #2, Oonagh Young Gallery (2022). Sorcha’s work has been supported through the Arts Council of Ireland Agility Award (2023, 2022, 2021) and a Mayo Artist Bursary Award (2025, 2023, 2022). She holds an MA in Art + Research Collaboration from IADT Dún Laoghaire (2024) and a BA in Painting from Limerick School of Art & Design (2019).