Hannah Quinlivan

Artist Profile

Through various methods of exploring line and form – via traditional drawing techniques, canvas painting, wire and salt installation, as well the use of LED lighting – Hannah Quinlivan challenges the way we expect drawing to operate and be presented. Subsequently her work becomes experiential not only in its physicality but also through a range of conceptual connections.

Grappling with contemporary issues such as human migration, emotional cognition, time’s flowing passage and more traditional explorations of landscape and remoteness, Hannah’s work uses processes of repetition, ephemerality and the interplay of light and shadow to open up discussions around some of contemporary society's most pressing topics. The evolving quality of her practice gives Quinlivan’s work an organic, living quality that creates an immersive experience for the viewer.

Time is unfixed, flowing fickle, fluctuating. Temporal asymmetries cleave and splinter. Frozen, dripping, gushing, moments drift and rush. Turgidities turn turbulent, echoing the glacial groans and moans of collapsing time. Unevenly distributed duration unhinges the conditions of the everyday. Not just fast forward but also slow motion, time is out of joint, stretched thin like a membrane and compressed like wrinkled skin. Stress fractures and crumple zones contour the unnatural course of life, marking crisis and contradiction. Rhythmic dilation and compound acceleration, these are the conditions of still motion.
Artist Statement - Hannah Quinlivan

'Grounded in traditional techniques of making such as the repetitive work of knotting, Hannah’s practice is highly inventive, and dynamic rather than static – the pulsing movement within individual works suggests their relationship to universal natural forces. Standing with one of her large sculptural installations one has the sensation of liquid movement, the flow of time and tide and the cycle of expiration and regeneration.'
Excerpt from catalogue essay by Deborah Clark 2025

'Memory has long been a dominant theme in Quinlivan’s practice. She sculpts memory of place through light and shadows, movement and reflection. This recent body of work continues to focus on place memory and its ecology through an alternate lens of ‘home’ and the life of family within. It is through her childhood that home is brought to the fore in the form of place memory. Throughout the series runs a weft of contrasting lines reminiscent of both contoured landscapes and the loosening thread of an old family blanket. Like the thread of an old blanket, memories are woven, shaped and intersect with others’ and their recollections. It is in this moment when memories collide that the forgotten is remembered.'
Excerpt from catalogue essay by Sita McAlpine 2022

Quinlivan is a young artist who has found her own distinctive voice, one which unites the intimate and the personal with the public and universal. Her art is distinctive, intense and very memorable.
Sasha Grishin, 2018

*Read: Arts Hub Editor Gina Fairley reviews Conjunctures, 2023
* Read On gender, pay and public art article from Arts Hub,April 2020
* Read The Moving Impulses of Hannah Quinlivan article from Art World Women, March 2018

+ Read more

Join Preview List Listen to Podcast

Artist CV

Hannah Quinlivan completed her Bachelor of Visual Arts at the Australian National University (ANU) in 2013 and pursued a PhD at the ANU School of Art & Design. Her practice has been recognised by curators and collectors alike for her skilful exploration of ideas around human movement, emotional cognition and time’s flowing passage.

Quinlivan has participated in various international exhibitions. In 2016, she exhibited Spatialisation at Pembroke College during the Time and Temporality conference at Cambridge University and toured with Project Field Trip through Singapore, the Philippines, and Indonesia. She performed Immobilised at the Zentrum für Kunst und Urbanistik in Berlin in 2017 and held a solo exhibition, Pellucid , at Colorado State University. In 2018, she presented her solo show Impulses, Restraints, Tones at Jan Kossen Contemporary in New York. In 2019, she was part of MINIARTEXTIL in Como, Italy.

In Australia, Quinlivan has had solo exhibitions at the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra (2020, 2019, and 2016), the Town Hall Gallery in Melbourne (2019), and the Canberra Museum and Art Gallery (2017). She has been featured in group shows like Contour554 in Canberra (2022 and 2020), Drawn to Experience at Queensland College of Art (2015), MOTION at Bega Valley Regional Gallery (2015), and the Australian Print Triennial at Art Vault Mildura (2015).

She has completed public art projects including an artwork for the Frankston Hospital Redevelopment Project 2025, Canberra Hospital Expansion project (2023-2024), the foyer of 80 Anne St, Brisbane (2022), a sandstone engraving and ceramic print on glass at 275 George Street, Sydney (2021), a site-specific installation for Design Canberra, City Walk (2020), and artworks for the Canberra Light Rail Network stations (2018).

Quinlivan was a finalist in the Alice Prize (2018, 2014), the Churchie Art Prize (2017), and the Calleen Art Award (2017). She was an artist in residence at the Art at the Heart Residency, Shire of East Pilbara, and at the Zentrum für Kunst und Urbanistik in 2017, where she was mentored by artist Chiharu Shiota. She received the ANU College of Arts & Social Science Scholarship in 2016, participated in the Jump Mentoring Program through the Australia Council for the Arts in 2014, and received ARTS ACT funding in 2014 to establish a mentoring program for young Canberra arts graduates.

Her work is included in collections such as the National Gallery of Australia, The Australian High Commission in Singapore, ACT Legislative Assembly Art Collection, Arthur & Suzie Roe Collection, Justin Art House Museum, Deakin University Art Collection, The Australian National University, KPMG Art Collection, Shire of East Pilbara, Philip Cox Collection, Ormond College Collection, and various private collections.

+ Read more

Download CV