Draíocht Gallery, Dublin
1 Oct 2026 - 23 Jan 2027
1 Oct 2026 - 23 Jan 2027
Mise en abyme
Draíocht is delighted to present Sharon Murphy’s Mise en Abyme, which focuses on Parisian carousels and theatrical décor during moments of stillness and silence. Drawing on her background in theatre and informed by concepts from psychoanalysis and magic realism in literature, this work highlights Murphy’s longstanding interest in staged spaces and the performative in photography.
Mise en abyme originally commissioned by Nora Hickey M’Sichili Director Centre Culturel Irlandais Paris 2024 In association with Photo Museum Ireland and Golden Thread Gallery Belfast the exhibition toured in Ireland in 2025
GOMA Waterford
15 July- 16 Aug 2026
Official Launch, Thurs 2 July
6 – 8pm.
15 July- 16 Aug 2026
Official Launch, Thurs 2 July
6 – 8pm.
Mise en abyme
Official Launch, Thursday 23 July, 6 – 8pm.
Guest speaker – Cristín Leach.
Cristín Leach is an Irish author, radio and television presenter, journalist and art critic.
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.
In Western art history, ‘mise en abyme’ is the technique of placing a copy of an image within itself. Murphy uses this concept as a metaphor to investigate the boundaries between real and fictive spaces, concentrating on recurring motifs of theatre curtains, outdoor carousels, circus tents, performative sites, city parks and empty stages. This work addresses the essential nature of photographic seeing, performance, and Freud’s notion of the uncanny where the familiar becomes suddenly strange and disconcerting through a play between presence and absence, evoking both enchantment and a pang of unease.
Mise en abyme originally commissioned by Nora Hickey M’Sichili Director Centre Culturel Irlandais Paris 2024 In association with Photo Museum Ireland and Golden Thread Gallery Belfast the exhibition toured in Ireland in 2025
RHA Dublin
May - Aug 2026
May - Aug 2026
Cheval en Scene 2023
Currently on show at the Royal Hibernian Academy Annual Exhibition
Cheval en Scène forms part of my ongoing photographic series Mise en Abyme, developed during residencies in Paris. Photographed at the Musée des Arts Forains, the image depicts a carousel horse isolated within a theatrical darkness, illuminated as though suspended between performance and memory. Drawing on the concept of mise en abyme — a recursive image within an image — the work explores illusion, repetition, and the unstable boundary between the fictive and the real. The riderless horse becomes both stage prop and psychic presence: poised in perpetual motion, caught between enchantment and stillness.
Magnum Photos Paris
March 2026
A Residency funded by the French Ministry, supported by French Embassy Dublin and Centre Culturel Irlandais Paris
March 2026
A Residency funded by the French Ministry, supported by French Embassy Dublin and Centre Culturel Irlandais Paris
MAGNUM + Mise-en-scene
Magnum Photos Paris Residency, March, 2026Delighted to announce my month long research residency at Magnum Photos Paris, supported by the French Ministry, the French Embassy in Dublin, and the Centre Culturel Irlandais, I undertook a period of focused study in the Magnum archive and library.
The research centred on questions of mise en scène within photography, with particular attention to interior spaces, staging, and the relationship between the fictive and the real.
This period of enquiry contributes to the ongoing development of Mise en Scène (2026–2028).
Thanks to Irene Lombardo, Naima Kaddour and the brilliant people I met at Magnum. Also as ever thank you Nora Hickey and wonderful team at CCI. Big shout on to the partners without whom this would not be possible.
Withholding, Stillness, and the Fictive Real
Lecture on Current PracticeThis lecture offers an overview of Murphy’s current practice in photography, installation, and moving image, shaped by a formative background in theatre and scenographic thinking. It traces how space, staging, and attention operate as structuring principles across her work, while offering insight into artistic process, how work develops through time, return, and sustained looking.
Centred on Mise en Abyme (2021–2024), developed largely in Paris during a residency at the Centre Culturel Irlandais, the lecture explores photography as an unstable medium, one that holds a trace of the real while remaining constructed, interpretive, and psychologically charged. Murphy introduces the concept of the fictive real to describe images that are materially grounded yet atmospherically improbable, operating between fact and imagination.
Recurring motifs such as curtains, slits, coverings, and closed or dormant structures are discussed as strategies of withholding rather than revelation. These threshold spaces, including carousels, curtains, veils, stages and temporary theatres, function as propositional sites, inviting a state of doubled seeing in which meaning is suspended rather than resolved. Stillness is examined both as an aesthetic condition and as a working method, emerging through duration, return, and attentive looking.
Delivered for MA, BA, and doctoral students, as well as visiting artists, the lecture reflects on how Mise en Abyme clarified through being exhibited in different institutional contexts, at the Centre Culturel Irlandais (Paris), Photo Museum Ireland (Dublin), and Golden Thread Gallery (Belfast), each revealing distinct dimensions of the work. Rather than arriving as a fixed series, the project developed through repetition, installation, and dialogue with commissioner, curators, fine art printers, and collaborators.
Overall, the lecture proposes a practice that thinks slowly and spatially, valuing time, withholding, and relational encounter. It positions exhibition-making as integral to photographic practice, and the image not as a vehicle for explanation, but as a condition in which meaning can arise.
