Natalia Beylis, Sharon Phelan, & Aoife Hammond

Natalia Beylis' art revolves somewhere between sonic story-teller and multi-instrumental explorer. She has released over 45 albums between solo works and collaborations and has appeared on numerous compilations. Her music parallels the lines of her surroundings: bird song, creaky trees, farm animals, the northwesterly breeze, and rainfall. Lots and lots of rainfall.

While she regularly records on a variety of traditional instruments (mainly pianos, organs, keyboards and mandola), she is just as likely to use non-musical sound sources within her compositions. For example, she recently released an album using just the sounds created by a domestic sewing machine. In her live performances, Natalia layers seemingly incongruous sounds atop of each other to spawn strange juxtapositions and garbled parallels by exploring the sonic potentials of found objects, cassette tapes, field recordings, eerie mandola mantras, and dreamscape piano voyage.

Natalia's latest two releases 'She Came Through the Window to Stand By The Door' and 'Library of Sticks' are available from Nyahh Records and Artsy Records. Natalia is currently working on a collection of 'Sonic Tinctures' created using wildflowers from her townland.

Sharon Phelan is a Dublin-based 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. Sharon's live performances often draw on the physicality of sound through the tracing and re-tracing of sonic artefacts and interference patterns.

Recent performances, releases and exhibitions include: Body & Soul Festival (Solus Stage, 2023); Metronome Series (National Concert Hall, 2023); Reception Weekend (The Complex, 2023); Acoustic Atlas (album curated by Cobi Van Tonder, 2022); audiograft festival (Modern Art Oxford, 2022); Culture Night (Hugh Lane Gallery, 2022); Sonic Displacements (Project Arts Centre, 2022); Alternating Current (festival curated by Dublin Digital Radio, 2021); A Resonant Landscape (group exhibition at Limerick City Gallery curated by Mark Garry, 2021); and Woman in the Machine (exhibition co-created by VISUAL and Carlow Arts Festival, 2021). Recent publications can be found in: a row of trees (edited by Patrick Farmer, 2022); A Manual for Rematerialisation (edited by Nathan O’Donnell, 2021) and Voices of Memory (edited by Ruairí Ó Cuív, 2021). Sharon is currently working on a PLATFORM Commission for the 40th EVA International (September 2023).

Aoife Hammond is a singer, composer, and multi-instrumentalist based in Leitrim. They currently play with bands Extravision and Surge. Current collaborative projects include Goltraí, Geantraí, Suantraí, an exploration of women's voices in traditional music presented at the Dock, Carrick-on-Shannon; and ‘Songs of Grief and Death’ performed at the Hawkswell and Hyde Bridge Gallery, Sligo.

Since 2020, Aoife has been working as a solo artist composing original electronic and acoustic scores using synths, bouzouki, guitars, mandolin, and vocals, in response to folk stories, traditional song, and experimental video. Recent solo concerts include Cairde Sligo Arts Festival and Hunters Moon Swan Moon, and a recent commission by VISUAL Centre for Contemporary Art in Carlow to create a year-long collaborative project with artist Niamh Moriarty that focused on the traditions and festivals of the calendar year in Ireland.

Summer at The Dock is a series of outdoor film screenings, live music, and spoken word performances, taking place every Friday and Saturday from July 14th–August 19th.