Gwen Sion is an experimental composer, music producer and multidisciplinary artist working with sound, sculpture, DIY electronics, video and installation. She creates multi-instrumental, vocal and electronic compositions, and designs and builds her own handmade electronic instruments and experimental sound devices by recycling found objects and natural materials. She is interested in relationships between sound and environment, nature, technology, mythology, ritual and synaesthetic crossover, particularly the dynamic between colours and musical notation. Gwen often uses non-traditional composition methods inspired by reading landscapes as scores, alongside extended techniques, sound design, sampling, electronic manipulation, field-recordings and hydro-recordings, and collects physical fragments of the landscape to create her instruments. Engaging in acts of translation and transformation, she interprets landscape in musical terms, exploring how composition can be used asa means of mapping space and the cultural, ecological and socio-political significance of space.
Gwen has worked on a broad range of music and sound projects, commissions, public installations, exhibitions, performances and residencies throughout the UK and internationally, gaining support from organisations including Arts Council Wales, Arts Council England, The Arts Foundation, Sound and Music, British Music Collection, PRS Foundation, Opera North, Sound UK, Ty Cerdd, Oxford Contemporary Music, Wales Millennium Centre, Atelier11 Paris, GreywoodArts Ireland, StokkoyArt Norway, University of the Arts London, BBC, Netflix, Leland Music and Liquid Listening.
Her work 'HS2Ghostlands' (a multi-disciplinary arts and environmental research project) won LMVH’s ‘Maison/0 This Earth Award’ (championing sustainable arts practice and works advocating for nature), was nominated and shortlisted for 'MullenLowe NOVA Awards’ (2021) and shortlisted for ‘SustainabilityFirst Art Prize’ (2021). She was nominated for the 2023 Electronic Music Award (Arts Foundation Futures Awards), subsequently shortlisted and made one of only four category finalists. Sound and Music's New Voices and ACE’s DYCP supported 'catHead', a multi-genre electronic music project using her handmade instruments, which toured across the UK (August - December 2023). In 2024 Gwen developed an audio-visual performance project titled 'Llwch a Llechi' [Dust and Slate] for Wales Millennium Centre (premiered October 2024, performed live by 11 BBC National Orchestra of Wales players, Cor y Penrhyn choir, and Gwen using live electronics, including hand-built electronic instruments made from site-specific slate, oak and yew). The performance explored connections between music, landscape, language, tradition and folklore, combining elements of experimental electronic music, contemporary orchestral composition, choral composition (informed by North Wales’ working-class tradition of quarrymen’s choirs), and moving image.
Recently Gwen has composed new music for an immersive sound walk on the Brontë Moors, ‘Earth and Sky’ (commissioned by Opera North and Bradford City of Culture 2025), using geolocation technology meaning that the composition will evolve with different sonic elements triggered as the audience move through the landscape (open May – October 2025 in Haworth, West Yorkshire). Gwen is currently developing 'Atlantis 2050', a new audiovisual project transforming environmental sound and data into music performed alongside immersive visuals. The project highlights the impact of rising sea levels and coastal erosion through site-specific fieldwork, electronic music composition, data sonification, moving image, handmade instruments, installation and live performance. The premiere will take place at CULTVR Cardiff on August 29 2025, tickets are available here.
“ Gwen Sion's natural world of sound - combining political elements within her art, and her amazing ears, just a truly natural talent when it comes to sound and the creation of sound - as if nature is singing to you through her ”
– FINK aka Fin Greenall (jury member for the Electronic Music Award, Arts Foundation Futures Awards 2023)
“ Her considered, ambitious, compositions suggest looking at the extracted side of a mountain, seeing the strata, and feeling the impact of humans on the landscape ”
– JudeRogers, The Quietus
