Michael Hartley
The Elephant in the Room
Michael Hartley is a multidisciplinary artist from the North East of England whose practice spans drawing, painting, sculpture, music, engineering design, and performance. His work is driven by the belief that different media inform and inspire one another, and by a long-standing interest in perception, expression, and the varied ways people learn and interpret the world. Shaped by personal experience of neurodivergence and dyslexia, his academic focus explored self-directed learning within education.
Collaboration and experimentation are central to Hartley’s practice. He has worked as a mural artist, illustrator, designer of educational materials, and as a creator and performer of puppet shows. In recent years, he has developed a strong interest in creative processes that embrace limitation, using restricted tools or materials as a catalyst for imaginative and inventive responses.
Hartley now primarily designs and builds large-scale installations and sculptures for music and arts festivals, community street parades, and public spaces. His work increasingly incorporates sound, movement, and interaction, resulting in kinetic sculptural forms and props for stop-motion animation projects.
Inspired by natural structures and ecological thinking, Hartley prioritises the use of natural, recycled, or reclaimed materials, avoiding plastics and non-biodegradable substances where possible. He is drawn to the narratives embedded in found objects, often sourced from charity shops or discarded materials. By reassembling the broken or overlooked, his sculptures explore transformation, storytelling, and renewal, inviting viewers to imagine past histories and future moments, and to find meaning in collective, evolving forms.
Devon