hi
David Sappa works between sound sculpture, improvisation and field recording- with a dense smudge between.
Their projects take shape via site-responsive processes, exploring things found or discarded —iron nails, driftwood, shells, glass, rope, brick, willow, plastic, frayed metal, burnt cinders and bone—reconfigured and animated to reveal tender frictions, instability and leaky thresholds.
Sappa’s work explores material memory, porous temporality, care and neglect, and their interrelations within wider social systems.
Recent performances include Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Moers Festival, Tate Britain, the British Library, Deptford X, State51 and various venues across London.
arranged themselves into new forms and begun to dance...’
- Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival review
upcoming
Hundred Years Gallery - May 2026
SET Vauxhall - June 2026
Sadie Coles HQ (w/ Kiik Amor) - June 2026
Lake Space (w/ Kiik Amor) - July 2026
Cafe Oto - July 2026
Goodwood Art Foundation - July 2026
Horse Hospital - August 2026
Tate Britain - March 2026
No Clique - March 2026
Spring Tide Festival (w/Caroline Kraabel + Regan Bowering) - March 2026
On Conjuncture - Filet Gallery - Feb 2026
Of Noise - Late Works - Performances - Jan 2026
Of Noise - Late Works - Limited Edition Vinyl - Jan 2026
Of Noise - Late Works x State51 - Jan 2026
Extranormal - Ealing Arts Centre - Jan 2026
12 Hour Improvisation - Horse Hospital - December 2025
Ecotones - Radio Alhara - December 2025
Southwark Park Galleries - November 2025
Resonance.FM - live session - November 2025
The Horse Hospital - October 2025
Brak Improvisation (w/ Cath Roberts) - September 2025
Dialogues of Space - Cockpit Arts - Deptford X - July 2025
Uk Jazz News - 2025
Written in Music - 2025
Moers Festival - Foreshores Rising - Solo - 2025
Moers Festival - Duo (as slowturn) 2025
Moers Festival - Quartet (w/ Charlotte Keefe/Bella Comsom/Bruna Cabral) 2025
Quarry of Sound - Radio Alhara 2025
Happening @ Rosehill Brighton//Pencil Head 2025
Sound Art Exhibition - Morley Gallery 2025
Radiophrenia Glasgow - Fig Memory - 2025
Radiophrenia Glasgow - The Walker in the Landscape w/Caitlin Kiely - 2025
Winter Sculpture Park - Gallery No 32 2025
Arts Council England - DYCP - Grant 2025
Alapam - Slow Dense 2025
5 against 4 - 2024
No Clique - Folklore Hoxton 2024
Foreshores Rising - Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival 2024
Inertia Instruments - Project DIVFUSE 2024
HCMF - Fielding Talent - 2024
Sound and Music - Seed Award 2024
Hard Return Compilation - 2024
Don’t Look Back Records - Compilation - 2024
Fielding Talent - HCMF - 2024
Seed Award - Sound and Music - 2024
Funded Scholarship - Field Kitchen Academy - 2020
Labs Award - British Library - 2020
Funded Scholarship - Embodied Design School - 2019