Mark Garry

Mark Garry is a visual artist and musician whose practice has consistently woven sound into his research and making. He has integrated sonic compositions and sonic sculptures in his installation practice, created permanent outdoor sonic sculptures, and hosted listening clubs in Dublin and at art institutions across Ireland. Mark has written extensively about music, sound, and sonic activity, most recently in his publications to hold and to be held and Songs and the Soil. He has performed live in various collectives at The Kerlin Gallery Dublin, The Model Sligo, The Douglas Hyde Gallery Dublin, the Irish Museum of Modern Art Dublin, the Serpentine Gallery London, Cave Detroit, and White Box New York.

Mark has released music as part of his curatorial activity by artists such as Karl Him, Chequerboard, Secret Society, Sanso Xtro and The Warlords of Pez. Mark's A Winter Light is the third album by a collective of diverse Irish, UK and Berlin-based musicians whose central core is made up of Karl Burke, Eileen Carpio, Sean Carpio, Mark Garry, Nina Hynes and Fabien Leseure. For A Winter Light they were joined by musicians Oliver Alcorn, Claudia Schwab, Robert Stillman, Padraig Murphy and his brother actor and musician Cillian Murphy. The name of the collective changes with each project and it responds to a new theme with each recording.

Previous collaborations by this group—Sending Letters to the Sea (2009) and A Generous Act (2012)—were recorded in unconventional settings in a church in Dublin and an art museum in Pittsburgh. A Winter Light was created at the Model Gallery in Sligo and responded to Mark Garry's exhibition of the same title. This is the sixth collaborative recording project Mark has undertaken, using an unorthodox methodology where a gallery or art space is transformed into a fully functioning temporary recording studio. Many of the works that make up his exhibitions are developed and generated directly in the gallery space.

For this project, Mark brought together a temporary collective of musicians to compose works and record an album in response to the exhibition. Prior to their arrival in Sligo, each musician was made aware of Mark's conceptual and material approach to the exhibition. This set of concerns served as a guiding framework, with each participant encouraged to bring one musical response or idea to the project, which could then be expanded upon or developed into completely new works during the recording sessions. A Winter Light is a mixture of both approaches—some works arrived in nearly complete form while others were generated by the collective in Sligo over four intense, collaborative days.

Mark's latest work - Notes Gifted to Time - (out November 2026) is a new collaboration with philosopher Mick O'Hara and Carol Anne McGowan and integrates ambient electronics, vocal interpretation, and the philosophy of mourning.