Hannah Marshall develops artist led research periods with architectural settings, institutions and cultural environments that can hold silence, deep listening and sustained attention.

These periods create the conditions in which work can be questioned, tested and allowed to deepen before taking public form. Place, architecture, duration and the quality of attention are not background to the research; they are active materials within it. DEEP GROUND is the current research practice, emerging from an extended invited artist residency in the Pyrenees in 2026 and now developing beyond its founding site as a wider enquiry into place, architecture and the conditions surrounding the artist.

Protected research periods form part of the foundation of the practice, creating the ground from which future artworks, installations, writing, institutional collaborations and cultural propositions can emerge.

Selected research and residency invitations are considered where there is structural clarity, appropriate support and genuine alignment with the practice.

RESEARCH CONTEXTS

Across more than two decades, different environments have enabled distinct forms of incubation, experimentation and development within Hannah’s practice. This began with NESTA’s Creative Pioneer Programme at 21 and has since developed through specialist studios, cultural institutions, technical environments, sustained working bases and place responsive research periods. Each context has created different conditions for artistic enquiry. Selected examples are outlined below.

DEEP GROUND — founding research

Pyrenees, 2026. What began as a four week invited artist residency extended to more than six weeks of solitude, mountain walking, writing, listening and sustained work from the Mountain Room, approximately 1,000 metres above sea level. The period clarified an artist led methodology for examining how time, place, architecture, landscape and sustained attention shape the conditions from which new work can emerge.

L-ACOUSTICS — spatial listening

An ongoing artistic and research relationship exploring spatial sound, listening architecture and the cultural potential of listening. The relationship has moved between artistic development, specialist spatial audio environments and public conversation, including development connected with TEMPLE and HEARTLINE, a private HEARTLINE presentation for international museum and experience curators, and conversations at Cannes Lions with UN Live and SXSW London. It continues to provide a specialist context for exploring how sound, space, voice and technology can support artistic enquiry without technology becoming the subject of the work.

UCL PEARL — collaborative R&D

January 2024. An intensive research period for TEMPLE at UCL’s Person Environment Activity Research Laboratory [PEARL], a 4,000m² facility for creating and testing full scale environments under controlled conditions. The collaborative R&D centred on a large body of water and questions of resonance, with Hannah writing and recording an original spoken word score as part of the developing installation. The period included work in progress sharings with invited audiences, including local students, followed by facilitated conversation and response.

180 STUDIOS — working base

From 2021 to 2024, 180 Studios became a sustained London working and development base for the practice, supporting artistic R&D, project development, team building and ongoing work with collaborators and cultural partners. During this period, Arts Council England Culture Recovery Fund support enabled Hannah to expand the working structure around the practice and develop new projects, partnerships and institutional relationships from the building. The significance of 180 was continuity: an environment in which the practice could develop over time rather than around a single project.

CORIANDER STUDIO — material development

A specialist making context for translating ideas within the practice into physical and material form. Working directly with specialist printmakers through proofing, sampling and material experimentation, Hannah began developing a limited edition line and exploring how the philosophy of the work could be carried through surface, process, material behaviour and the physical qualities of the finished object. Coriander Studio is established in 1973 and based at the historic Worton Hall Studios, formerly part of Isleworth Film Studios.

NESTA — early incubation

Selected at 21 for NESTA’s Creative Pioneer Programme, an early incubation context combining residential development, business and personal coaching, mentoring and the testing of ideas. The programme supported Hannah in forming her first business plan and publicly articulating early enquiries into braille, tactile communication, hidden and encoded language and the body as a surface for communication, with Helen Storey MBE becoming an early mentor. In retrospect, it represents one of the earliest environments in which artistic enquiry, independent practice and entrepreneurship were able to develop alongside one another.

RESEARCH ENQUIRIES

For conversations around future research periods, hosting, patronage, institutional collaboration or partnerships, please get in touch. studio@hannahmarshall.com