❋ Hayley Suviste

Sound Art, Moving Image, Field Recording


Hayley’s practice is grounded in listening — to people, environments, and the stories and memories they hold. She works with oral histories, field recordings, and moving image, gathered through her own practice, community workshops, or drawn from archival sources. From these materials, she weaves sonic and visual worlds through installation, live performance, and long-form audio-visual and radiophonic work. Often using multi-channel and ambisonic sound, she creates environments that place the listener within them, where quieter details come into focus.

She is currently undertaking a practice-based PhD at the University of Manchester’s NOVARS Research Centre, funded by the NWCDTP. Her research explores oral histories as compositional material, alongside the ethical considerations of working with recorded voices in sound-based practice, including engagement with her own family histories and collaborative methods.

She has received commissions from Sounds from the Other City, Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, North West Sound Heritage, NEWSUBSTANCE, Olympias Music Foundation, and Quays Culture, MediaCityUK and Mediale, for which she collaborated with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra. She has been artist in residence at Maajaam (Estonia), Elektronmusikstudion EMS (Sweden), Forestry England, UoS Acoustic Laboratories, The Glasshouse International Centre for Music (Newcastle, UK), and Yorkshire Sound Women Network (University of Hull’s Ambisonic Studio). Her live performances have been presented at venues and festivals across the UK and internationally.

❋ Events
❋ Contact
Bandcamp // YouTube // Instagram

info@hayleysuviste.co.uk

❋ A Sound Path Along the River Irwell (2026)



Running alongside a hidden stretch of the River Irwell’s banks, this sound path invites audiences to meander and listen more deeply to its stories and ecosystems.

Bringing together field recordings and composed music, the piece unfolds across three levels of listening. The higher level starts above the river – focusing on birds, wildlife and other sounds from the banks – the midpoint at the water’s surface, and at the lower level, underwater microphones take listeners below, into a hidden world of freshwater life set against the low hum of the city.

The field recordings featured in this piece were made in this stretch of the River Irwell and are drawn from Hayley’s projects From the River’s Mouth (2025), commissioned by the University of Salford and From the Other, and The River Has Many Lives (2026), part of Carry The Clouds Away at The New Adelphi Exhibition Gallery, until 18 December 2026.



The work was presented as part of Salford Everywhere, a monumental living portrait of Salford and its people by award-winning visual artist and filmmaker Matthew Rosier. Featuring video portraits of 1,553 Salfordians projected onto the University of Salford’s Maxwell Building, the installation was accompanied by a live score celebrating the city’s musical heritage, arranged by Michael Betteridge, with music direction by Salford-based composer and DJ AFRODEUTSCHE.

The sound path was located along the pathway from the Crescent entrance into Peel Park, where it played from 6pm on both nights ahead of the Salford Everywhere projections. The project was made possible with support from Arts Council England and ERDF funding via Salford City Council.


←