Hannah Lees
Artist Profile
Hannah Lees is a British artist whose work explores material transformation, belief systems and the quiet rituals embedded in everyday life. Working across sculpture, installation and print, Lees approaches materials intuitively, allowing their physical properties — erosion, fragility, residue — to guide the development of form.
Hannah Lees’ practice often engages with themes of hermitage, pilgrimage and spiritual retreat, not as fixed religious narratives but as modes of withdrawal and reflection within contemporary life. Through subtle shifts in context, Lees destabilises interpretation, encouraging viewers to reconsider objects, gestures and fragments that might otherwise be overlooked.
Process is central to Hannah Lees’ methodology. Rather than imposing meaning onto materials, Lees allows meaning to emerge through repetition, weathering and careful reconfiguration. Decay and regeneration are not opposites in her work, but intertwined states.
Hannah Lees completed a Postgraduate Diploma at Chelsea College of Art in 2011 and undertook a Foundry Residency at the Royal College of Art in 2012. Since then, she has exhibited widely in the UK and internationally, including presentations at Camden Art Centre, David Dale Gallery (Glasgow), and other artist-led and institutional contexts that foreground materially driven contemporary practice. Her work has gained recognition for its quiet intensity and sustained engagement with spiritual and environmental themes.
