ONCA established itself in 2012 as an arts charity to address issues of social and environmental justice through art. ONCA Gallery was situated in Brighton’s city centre until its closure in early 2025. It hosted countless exhibitions and gallery events, working with artists, educators and organisations to co-deliver engaged programmes and workshops with an inclusive social profile.
Its second space, the ONCA Barge in the Brighton Marina, hosted a community-centred learning space that supported artist development and offered a programme of creative activities in East Brighton. With emphasis on the social and environmental role of current art practices, ONCA encourages diversity in art, with sound as a regular feature.
ONCA: Sound Art Highlights
A Thing Heard: Four Ways of Listening • August 2017
One stop of the UK/Berlin summer tour of five sound installations and objects by DMSA graduates and staff
Sound and the Urban Environment
University of Brighton • May – June 2015
An exhibition and symposium exploring auditory encounters with the urban environment, and envisaging future planning of urban and domestic soundscapes
Kathy Hinde: Music Box Migration
Making Tracks exhibition • July – September 2013
A mechanical music box driven by punched-hole scores created from images of birds, bird migration patterns and maps.
Chisato Minamimura: Scored In Silence (Premiere)
Brighton Digital Festival • September 2018
A multi-media performance by deaf artist-choreographer Chisato Minamimura that combines holographic imagery, live performance, sign-miming, animation, film footage, and a tactile audio soundtrack to explore the perspectives of Deaf survivors of the atomic bomb atrocities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.
Wesley Goatley & Tobias Revell: Mephitic Air
Brighton Digital Festival • September – November 2017
A site specific installation which sonifies and visualises measurements of air quality (taken) on one of Brighton’s busiest roads, outside the ONCA gallery .