❋ 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

❋ The Seen and Unseen Forest (2026)



The Seen and Unseen Forest is a series of three digital forest meditations by artist Hayley Suviste, created from footage and sound compositions developed during residencies in Forestry England's Delamere Forest, the New Forest, and Bedgebury National Pinetum and Forest.

Each film features a specially commissioned spoken-text introduction by Dr Joycelyn Longdon, writer, environmental justice researcher and educator, whose poetic response deepens the narrative and emotional dimensions of the work.Representing the first public outcome of Suviste's residency research, the films capture early insights and responses shaped through site-based exploration and collaboration. 

During the residencies, Hayley worked closely with Forestry England ecologists and foresters, whose knowledge, expertise and contributions informed the development of the work. Combining moving image with layered sound compositions recorded on site, each film offers a reflective and sensory encounter with the forest landscape, translating lived experience of place into an immersive digital form.

The project is funded by Forestry England and the North West Consortium Doctoral Training Partnership, supporting a dynamic exchange between academic research, artistic practice and Forestry England's landscape