Hannah Lees
°1983, Kent (UK) – lives and works in Margate (UK)
The work of Hannah Lees investigates the idea of cycles, how things come to an end and as such carry the potential for form new beginnings. Lees finds, gathers and reworks materials and objects to explore how ideas and beliefs can live, die and be reborn across times and cultures. Her work alternates between exploring circularity and linearity – sometimes tracking modulating self-sustaining systems, at other times following a process by which an object is permanently transformed.
Lees’ practice is particularly concerned with activating the affective potential of objects, often finding resonance amongst material remains such as beach combed souvenirs, the detritus of living things, and objects that have faded into obsolescence.
Hannah Lees is interested in how civilisations form and end around an ever-changing relationship between what is valued and what is discarded. Often she uses food by-products to produce sculptures. As such, her work reflects on the role of food in forming histories and rituals and the ways that gathering to eat and drink can connect cultures and rituals from different times and places.
Hannah Lees exhibited internationally and showed a.o. at Turner Contemporary, Margate; Brockley Gardens, London; La Centrale, Auvergne-Rhone-Alps; VITRINE, Basel; The Approach, London; Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen; Lambda Lambda Lambda, Pristina; Tatjana Pieters, Ghent; Workbench, Milan; ReadingRoom, Melbourne; ltd los angeles, Los Angeles; and MOSTYN, Wales.
You can discover more of Hannah Lees’ work on her own website.