Artist Statement

Hannah Wiles recently graduated with First Class Honours from the school of Art and Design at Manchester Metropolitan University. She is currently studying for her Masters Degree in Fine Art Textiles. Her practice is rooted in the urban environment and deals with issues surrounding dereliction and abandonment. She is concerned with regeneration, modernisation, and the smoothing over of the past to make way for a uniform space of consumption.

In her work she responds poetically to her built environment, drawing attention to the public realm that appears to have been rendered invisible to most through sheer force of habit. Working intuitively on city structures such as lamp posts, benches and brick walls, she uses non conventional medium such as thread, felt, drawing pins or glitter, in order to highlight their form. In this way, she would like to re-establish a sense of ownership within public space and reawaken a sense of wonder to our mundane experience of the city. She likes the idea that the unexpected can sometimes be realised in the transformation of the cracks and gaps from lifeless spots to extraordinary vibrant sites.

Her work has been described as a form of site-specific interventionism, as she interacts with an existing space in a way that may challenge the expectations of the intended audience, in the hope of reconstructing the urban narrative.