Suzanne Hutchinson-Haase

Suzanne Hutchinson is a multidisciplinary fine art practitioner who produces drawings, installations, sculptures, paintings, collages, performance and projected image to explore memories and histories of landscape, place, people, bodies, encounters, and sensations. 

Experiences of absence, loss, death and transformation and how these can be marked, commemorated and mapped are areas investigated through Hutchinson’s research. In her art work Suzanne combines image, object and audience relationship to create immersive, reflective, contemplative, spaces where time is slowed and repair and transformation are proposed. 

Examination of the physical and conceptual properties of materials and making processes are key aspects of Hutchinson’s practice with materials and processes highlighting relationships between permanence and transience and between repetition and the performative action in creating meaning. 

Suzanne’s research examines the interplay of two dimensional pictorial space, three dimensional object, and physical encounter to create works which encourage audiences and viewers to pause from their everyday pace. The spaces she creates prompt reflective thought and awareness of the present moment.

Hutchinson’s fine art practice combines independent projects disseminated in national museums and galleries with collaborative projects working with composers, sculptors, performers, writers, actors and choreographers, disseminated in international theatres, performance spaces and specific sites. In Hutchinson’s research and art practice she has taken on varied roles, as solo creator, installation artist, co-creator, theatre director, art director, set, costume and jewellery designer /maker, script editor, community facilitator and educator. 

Scholarly and Art Practice biography

Suzanne is an academic staff member in the Fine Art Sculpture course team whose current role is Course Leader for the Fine Art BA Hons Sculpture course. Suzanne is Level 5 Year tutor and Module Leader for Level 5 studio practice modules within the Sculpture course and Module Leader of The Drawing within the Expanded Field Option Module within the School of Art.

Previously Suzanne was Course Leader of the BA Hons Fine Art Performance and Visual Art (Dance) course and she has led undergraduate degree level studio practice modules at Level 4, Level 5 and Level 6 as part of her extensive teaching experience. Suzanne is a mentor for MA Fine Art students and has considerable experience of devising and writing undergraduate course modules. She has been the elected academic staff member on School Boards and has actively contributed to numerous University of Brighton committees. Suzanne currently serves on SQSA which has responsibility for academic health and is a member of the health and wellbeing committee.

Suzanne’s installations, collages, paintings, sculptures and drawing works have been exhibited and presented in numerous galleries and performance spaces throughout the UK including, Brighton Museum and Art Gallery, TOM main house theatre, The University of Brighton galleries,  The Hayward Gallery, The Royal Festival Hall, The Barbican, The Crafts Council Gallery, Nicola Jacobs Gallery (Cork Street), Fabian Carlsson (New Bond Street) and Atlantis Gallery. 

Suzanne’s collaborative projects include work with Glyndebourne Education Department with performance installation outcomes disseminated in Newhaven Fort, Sussex gardens, schools and in the Sussex landscape, with Northlands festival resulting in an opera performance installation involving eighty performers in a Wick bus depot, with the Unit for Art and Offenders and the prison community with work disseminated in a prison chapel, with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Phoenix Dance Company, David Glass Mime, Call of the Wild, and writers/ performers Robin Driscoll and Tony Haase with work disseminated through national tours involving multiple UK theatre and festival venues. 

Suzanne is a member of the Drawing Research Network and has contributed her work to the Memories, Narratives and Histories network. She has work in private and public collections and publications on her practice have accompanied a solo exhibition and a collaborative project. Images of her work have featured in national and local newspapers and her work has been reviewed in national arts magazines. 

Suzanne initially trained in Fine Art at Brighton Polytechnic where she gained a first class degree, she completed her MA in Fine Art at Chelsea School of Art soon afterwards and has subsequently worked consistently within the arts, cultural and educational sector for over two and a half decades.