Echo/Locate  |  Sorcha McNamara

Linenhall Arts Centre

15 August – 27 September 2025

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.