Hollie Miller
Video still from WeThe Living (2019)
20 minute performance
Single channel video, 13 Minutes 26 seconds, HD Colour
Sound by Craig Scott
Hollie Miller is a visual artist working in performance, moving image, photography and sound. Her corporeal works are site-specific, intimate and time-based. In placing emphasis on recording live performances, Miller suggests that our everyday actions never cease and can be crystallized through the digital as ‘living fossils’.
Using her own body as a vessel of transgression and subversion, Miller’s work is informed by the history of women’s self-representation. She is particularly interested in vulnerability as a form of resistance and how this engenders our capacity for empathy in relation to the other. Through her work, Miller aims to critique and disrupt the capitalist portrayal of women by the commercial industries.
Hollie Miller has an MA in Fine Art Performance from The Royal College of Art (2016) with initial conservatoire training in dance and somatic practice (2007-10). Her work has been presented nationally and internationally in museums, galleries, festivals in performance art, fine art and land art.
Selected Exhibitions/Performances
The Earth Moved Beneath Her Feet, Alps Art Academy, Switzerland (2018)
Trace The Field Line, Clayhill Arts, w. Dialogues5 Mark Devereux Projects, Somerset, UK (2018)
Hanging Rock, Revolve Orangeriet, Sweden (2018)
Gestures Are Our Own Living Fossils, w. Sam Williams, Baltic 39 Gallery, Newcastle, UK (2017)
As The Reflections Vanish And Burn They Become Shadowed, Doubled And Thickened, Apulia Land Art Festival, Italy (2016)
Fight Or Flight- Proximity As Threat, Spiral, Wacoal Art Center, Tokyo (2016)
I Will Follow, Lychee One Gallery, London (2016)
Dirt As Emblem Of Disorder, Uppsala Konstmuseum, Sweden (2016)
Hidden In Plain Sight, Galeria Labirynt, Poland (2015)
If My Eyes Were To Leak Out Of My Body- Free, Kottinspektionen, Sweden (2015)
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Ecdysis - Riverbed Crawl (2015)
Site-Specific Performance: River Thames, Low Tide
Photo Nigel Rolfe
Held (2016)
Site-Specific Durational Performance: Comeragh Mountains, Ireland
Photo: Nigel Rolfe
Time At Hogchester Arts
Residency period - November 2019
During my winter residency at Hogchester I spent my time filming in the surrounding landscape and empty gallery barn. The cottage acted as a warm and cosy base for me to recover between shoots. Chantal was incredibly generous in allowing me to use her studio as a sort of dressing up box, which was rich in materials that acted as a bridge for explorations between my body and the landscape. There were several items in her collection that really fascinated me, namely the animal skulls, bird skeletons, eggs and nests and other dry specimens.
Access to raw materials and the vast outdoors allowed me to generate work quickly in the relatively short time period. A huge diversity of landscape (woodland, meadows, ponds) were all within walking distance. The wonderful wildlife that thrives at Hogchester kept me company and I enjoyed performing to a heard of goats or a family of foxes. It was great to gain an insight into Chantal and fellow resident artist Jonathan Michael Ray’s processes over evening meals and the homely environment meant I could really submerge myself in thought and experiment without judgement.
I would highly recommend this residency to any artist looking for a few weeks’ hideaway to reconnect with nature somewhere quietly wild. I loved hearing the night roll in as the owls called, knowing I had new work in my belly and mud under my fingernails.
Still from WIP film taken at Hogchester Arts