Howard Hannah — Collaborative Practice
I work as part of the artist collective Howard Hannah (HH) alongside photographer Kev Howard. Our collaborative practice emerged in 2018, but our working relationship began much earlier, in 2009, when we first collaborated on a creative portrait for the exhibition United Artists of Teesside.
Over time, conversations in the photography studio revealed shared interests in colour, perception, and the sensory experience of space. These early exchanges led to our first formal collaboration, The Rainbow Room × Magnatation in Colour, and to the decision to work as a collective rather than as two individual artists collaborating occasionally.
From the outset, Howard Hannah has operated as a true shared practice. We do not work as separate artists bringing individual works together; instead, we develop ideas collectively through experimentation. Our studio process often feels closer to a laboratory than a traditional studio, with moving image, sound, light, and material tests unfolding side by side. Works evolve organically, shaped by process, intuition, and what emerges through making.
A pivotal moment for us came in 2019, following the response to our early collaborative works, when we were awarded a Seedbed Award from Navigator North. This support allowed us to deepen our experimental approach and led to new commissions within the UK light festival circuit.
Since then, we have produced a series of short films and installations, often commissioned for large-scale public events. Our work has been presented at Nightfall Festival, Middlesbrough Art Weekender, Southwark Park Galleries, Moving Gallery Sunderland, and internationally at the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts. Works such as Shimmer Shifting (2019) and Revontulet (2022) grew directly from studio experiments — in the case of Revontulet, a fleeting two-second test of acrylic inks moving through water became the foundation for a film that has since toured the UK and New Zealand.
Working within the expanding context of international light festivals has shaped how we think about scale, audience, and place. These public, immersive environments allow the work to exist beyond the gallery, engaging broad audiences while contributing to local cultural economies. We see our practice continuing to evolve through global commissions, permanent architectural installations, performance contexts, and editioned film works.
A poem on the work
Playfully colourful, wispishly ethereal;
light and material exploration floating.
Fluidly musical, with imagery and film,
confounding sensation with sound.
Alongside our collective work, both Kev and I maintain individual practices that inform what we make together. My background as a painter, alongside my experience as a swimmer and scuba/free diver, influences my relationship to movement, flow, and immersion. Kev’s practice as a photographer and musician, including extensive performance as a didgeridoo artist — combined with his background in social justice and disability rights, shapes the sound, ethics, and values embedded in our collaborative work.
Between us, we have exhibited internationally across the USA, Germany, France, Sweden, Malaysia, Singapore, Australia, and New Zealand, completing residencies in Germany, Holland, Malaysia, and the UK, and delivering installations in Berlin, Kuala Lumpur, and London. Our work has been featured in The Guardian Guide, The Telegraph, Hunger Magazine, and at institutions including MIMA and Southwark Park Galleries.
Looking ahead, I see Howard Hannah entering a new phase, one that allows for deeper focus, ambition, and experimentation. Time and sustained support would enable us to develop work guided by nature, scientific principles, and immersive sensory experience, expanding the language we’ve been building together over the past decade.
@HowardHannahCollective
@hannahcampionartist
@kevhowardphotographer