Hannah Birkett studied fine art and creative writing at Lancaster University, and after graduating went on to study fine art at the Royal Academy Schools. Her practice incorporates sculpture and painting, with a strong foundation in drawing. She continues to exhibit both nationally and internationally, including Mostyn Open Exhibition (2014), the Royal Academy, Hack the Barbican, and Wisnicz Castle, Poland. Hannah continues to teach both fine art and art and design to both Foundation and BA students in the UK.
At the heart of Hannah’s practice is a concern with absurdity, mimicking and re-arranging sights half-remembered from everyday life. Re-presenting the ‘forlorn particulars’ of our material surroundings in a multitude of disciplines is designed to reflect the peripheral nature of looking. The primacy of a vivid visual memory is here aligned with a quiet reflection on materialism, taking solace in the minor details incidental to daily routine. Here, a re-presentation of lived experience pertains toward a wider tendency to seek meaning and to perceive allegory in our surroundings, processes that are simultaneously rewarding and absurd; between certainty and conjecture we may conjure a sense of the world and our ‘purpose’ therein.