Profile

Daniel Hunt is a Nottingham-based multi-disciplinary artist working primarily through performance and painting. He has exhibited and presented work in a variety of sites and contexts, including Nottingham Contemporary, Backlit Gallery, Nottingham, Scaffold Gallery, Manchester, Emergency at Z Arts, Manchester, Fierce Festival Birmingham, The International Riverside Festival, Stockton, The Bracknell Gallery, South Hill Park, and the Whitstable Biennale. He is a Senior Lecturer in Fine and Performing Arts at the University of Lincoln, and a Post-Graduate Researcher at Nottingham Trent University. He is a founder member of Nott Normal, and 3^rd Space Studios, Nottingham.

Artist’s Statement

I approach art primarily through an interest in formal concerns – the mechanics and materiality of an artwork; its composition, aesthetics and design. In performance, my primary material are other performers – I am far more interested in them (and what they can do) than I am in myself. My performances construct formal structures, systems and sequences that overlap, connect and conflict, initiating physical, visual and linguistic dialogue that frames and reveals the unique qualities of the performer and the beauty of collaboration.

My work rarely starts with an intention to say a specific thing or make a particular point, but rather generates meaning after the fact – through fluid composition and the assemblage of disparate, contrasting, devised, embodied or stolen material. A licence for the spontaneous through a rigid framework of concept and form.

Likewise, I have never created work for a specific context, application or audience – I do not want a ‘community arts’. I believe provocation and experimentation should be integral to all arts activities, and each project be initiated with the same concerns and intention – to create what you need to create, and put it in front of an audience. The most pressing issue is one of access – rather than creating a unique form of ‘community arts’, applied art, theatre in education etc, I would rather all audiences, artists and participants are treated as equal. As someone who has various disabilities in the family, and am continually battling my own mental health issues, I see Nott Normal as a crucial step in this process -– together, across artistic disciplines and different abilities, we create the art that matters and share it with those who want it. If needed, we’ll smash down walls to do it.