❋ 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, New Substance, Olympias Music Foundation, and Quays Culture/MediaCityUK/Mediale, for which she collaborated with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra. She has been artist in residence at Maajaam (Estonia), Elektronmusikstudion EMS (Sweden), Forestry England, the University of Salford 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

❋ Sounding Water (2025)


An unfolding durational gathering of sound, image, and voice at PINK in Stockport (17–19 October 2025), created in collaboration by Fiona Brehony, Aisling Davis, Lizzie King, and Hayley Suviste. Sounding Water explores how we might engage with the agency of water to surface and liberate the layered histories of the places we inhabit.

A sold-out evening of live performance that interwove the artists’ field recordings, archival traces, spoken word, and moving image into a fluid, multi-channel environment, inviting listeners to drift along the currents of memory and place. Live multi-channel mixing by Emmy Lambert.




We have released Sounding Water as a publication with digital audio download, including a binaural mix of the live performance. Featuring four ten page books in a soft wrap cover, this handmade book shows field work documentation from each of out four artistic practices.  

Sounding Water by Lizzie King, Fiona Brehony, Hayley Suviste, Aisling Davis