My practice tests ideas of wild spaces through research based exploration, observation and rituals, often outside of a formal art context, using a language of unseen performance and obsolete communication, Morse and signalling flags, storms and migrations, to map and navigate the world. Documented using drawing, film and sound, ideas often develop into large site specific temporal installations in unusual venues. Conversations with strangers on the perceived margins, gangsters, river pilots, cemetery wardens and priests, often activate the work.
Pieces include transforming the Liverpool Hilton into a poetry lighthouse, using a torch and Morse code from the top floor suite across the Irish Sea; poetry buried by workmen at significant crossings; a nautical mile of unravelled and re-knotted boat line, looped between fourth floor rafters in a disused dockside warehouse for Liverpool Biennial fringe.
In 2025 I received funding from the Oppenheim-Downes Trust for a residency at Scottish Sculpture Workshop, Aberdeenshire, from Grizedale Arts to join their Valley symposium re-evaluating rural arts practice, and began research at Cecil Sharp House folk archive with sound artist Conor Kelly, exploring song collector Vaughan Williams’ 1900’s journals and fragmented folk song transcripts.
I have held lecturing and programme lead posts at University of the Arts London, and graduated in MA Fine Art from Liverpool John Moores (first) in 2017.
Ali Hutchinson 