Launch: Saturday 22 November 1-3pm

Dates: 22 November 2025 – 31 January 2026

Gallery: Lower Gallery

Curator: Sarah McAvera

Golden Thread Gallery presents a new exhibition by artist Sharon Murphy, curated by Sarah McAvera.

Murphy draws from her background in theatre and influences from psychoanalysis and magic realism. Delving into theatrical settings, she captures moments of quiet and stillness. Through recurring symbols such as curtains, deserted stages, and performative environments, she investigates the thin line between illusion and reality, presence and absence.

Murphy constructs layered visual narratives that are both captivating and unsettling. Her photographs intentionally reference Freud’s concept of the ‘uncanny,’ where the familiar takes on a strange, eerie quality, underscoring the inherently performative aspects of looking and being observed.

This solo exhibition represents a pivotal development in Murphy’s recent practice, and an exciting opportunity to work with Golden Thread Gallery curator Sarah McAvera, merging conceptual ideas with intensified attention to the sculptural qualities of the photographic image. Real and imagined spaces merge, drawing the viewer into realms that are both tangible and metaphorical.

Mise en Abyme is the third iteration of the exhibition, previously exhibited at the Irish Cultural Centre, Paris (curated by Nora Hickey M’Schili) and at Photo Museum Ireland (curated by Trish Lambe and Darren Campion). The exhibition at Golden Thread Gallery will include a new video work made in collaboration with Belfast photographer Simon Mills and dance artist Argyro Tsampazi.

With thanks to Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris and Draiocht, Blanchardstown.

About the Artist

Sharon Murphy is a visual artist whose practice encompasses photography, video and installation. Drawing on a background in theatre and informed by psychoanalysis and magic realism, her work provokes viewers to question what they are seeing, bringing their own histories and narratives to ‘complete’ the meaning of the image. Balancing the theoretical and the experiential (including that of the viewer), Murphy is especially drawn to the inherent binary nature of photography – the tensions of the medium between its real/indexical nature and its unreal/constructed nature. The photograph is simultaneously both record/truth and constructed/staged subject to multiple interpretations, perceptions and distortions by both maker and viewer.

Murphy investigates the boundaries between real and fictive spaces within the pictorial frame: concentrating on recurring motifs of theatre curtains; outdoor carousels; circus tents; performative sites; city parks; and empty stages. These scenes become the point of departure for a wider exploration of the tension between hidden and revealed, negative and positive, illusion and disillusion, the uncanny and the unremarkable.

Recent exhibitions: Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris, GOMA, Waterford, Limerick City Gallery, Draíocht, National Gallery of Ireland, RHA, Golden Thread Gallery Belfast, Halftone, PhotoIreland, Loop Festival, Barcelona.

Murphy is a co-founding member of Shell/Ter Artist Collective (S/TAC). Her work is held is in private + public collections. She works between Dublin and Paris.

Accessibility 

The Lower Gallery is accessed via the ground floor, which is step-free.

Large print versions of exhibition texts are available.

Access videos of the gallery are available on our website here, with BSL and ISL signed versions.

Please let us know if you have any questions or additional requirements, we are working hard to make the gallery as accessible as possible for everyone.

Golden Thread Gallery is proud to hold an Arts & Disability Access Award 2025 Venue Accreditation. 

Golden Thread Gallery is supported by: