Hanna Tuulikki

Hanna Tuulikki is a musician, visual artist and illustrator whose primary focus is the human voice. As a vocalist she performs, composes and records solo and group works, as well as fronting Glasgow-based bands Nalle and Two Wings. Tuulikki’s art practice is largely place-specific and uses various forms of performance and installation to respond to both rural and urban settings. She often uses voice as a material to experiment with ways of dissolving language and distinctions between separate phenomena. One aspect of her work stems from an interest in the role of song and sound mimesis as way to engage with environment and the sounds that emanate from landscape. Another aspect grows from an interest in ideas of community and the meaning of song in human relationships. Exploration of folk traditions also runs through her work. Tuulikki makes drawings that parallel her work with sound, illustrating subject, process and narrative.

Hanna is interested in exploring correlations between voice/breath/body and water/tide/land. Drawing upon the horizontal/vertical, inward/outward, rising/falling motions of the tide, she intends to compose a piece for multiple voices and trombones to be performed upon the water. Hanna will also contribute a series of drawings/visual scores/maps for the print publication as part of the GI project High- Slack-Low-Slack-High.

Selected current/recent works and performances include Air falbh leis na h-eòin | Away with the Birds (large-scale site specific vocal composition/performance/installation for a rural environment in the Western Isles, 2011-ongoing); Song as Portrait (performance commissioned by artist/curator Steven Anderson, The National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh/ Peacock Arts, Aberdeen 2011-12); Salutation to the Sun (performance of sound work at City Halls, Glasgow 2011); New Music Showcase (SOUND festival, Aberdeen, 2011); Language of the Birds (sound piece commissioned by Ceol’s Craic, Celtic Connections, Glasgow 2011); Stackwalker (film music and performance commissioned by Simon Yuill, CCA, Glasgow 2010);  Wilder Shores of Love (drawings/sound/performance, Welcome Home, Glasgow 2010); Jane Arden Project: Mind-Less-Mind-Ful-Mind (sound/photographs, LCC, London, 2010); Very Cellular Songs (The Barbican, London 2009); The Spirits of Sound at the Teenage Fair (vocal sound library commissioned by Simon Yuill/The Paragon Ensemble, CCA, Glasgow 2009); Abbeyview Note Catcher (site-specific sound work, Fife, 2008); Our Breaths Bellow (video/sound/performance, Red Wire Gallery, Liverpool, 2008).

Selected music releases include Two Wings ‘Love’s Spring’ CD, Tin Angel Records (forthcoming); Nalle ‘Wilder Shores of Love’ CD/LP, Alt Vinyl (2010); Nalle ‘The Sirens Wave’ CD/LP, Locust Music (2008); Nalle ‘By Chance Upon Waking’ CD, Pickled-Egg (2006); Scatter ‘The Mountain Announces’ CD Blank Tapes (2006).

Artist’s Website