Hannah Valentine (b. 1989 Tāmaki Makaurau) lives and works across Tāmaki Makaurau and Tauranga.
Valentine's practice is pervaded by the artist's interest in the body and its physical sensibilities, emphasising the importance of touch and our experience of interacting with the world and each other. With her wide-ranging practice taking form primarily in object and installation, Valentine’s work is permeated by the human body and its various appendages and gestures.
The artist brings together hand-moulded bronze aspects with sourced materials including utilitarian climbing rope, the simplicity and precision of her careful compositions resulting in a tactile tension.
I really like the way bronze is able to pick up and hold imprints of the body. Similar to working with clay, but there is something about its permanence I’m drawn to. In a culture where so much is thrown away, I like that working with bronze is so solid, so present and lasting. I love those areas on public sculptures that you can see thousands of hands have rubbed. It’s a material that people tend to understand, too, though usually from the perspective of monuments, rather than objects on a personal scale. I like that it responds to touch. It warms up, it likes to be held.
Viewers can fill the space around [the sculptures], but for all that the freestanding works are made of bronze, they are still fragile. They are thin, light, and a touch sends them into a quiver.
- Hannah Valentine, 2022
Valentine has received several residencies and awards, most recently selected as the Supreme Award Winner of the Miles Art Awards 2022, and her work is held in private and public collections. She was a member of the RM Collective (2018 - 2021) and co-directed the artist-run space LOFT Jervois (2014-2015).