Sheila Hill is an English artist, writer and theatremaker.[1]
Career
She was a columnist and feature writer for the Guardian newspaper, before focusing on theatre, and art installations.
A spinal injury, in her early 30s, removed her from normal life, but Atkinson Morley Hospital's intensive rehabilitation programme started to turn things around, despite the fact that regaining a functional level of strength took several years.
Sheila wrote about this period in a series of newspaper articles, and also in her theatre work, Crocodile Looking At Birds - selected as one of the Observer newspaper Arts Events of the Year.[2][3][4]
As an artist, she draws on real voices, transcribing and editing these into short, poetic testimonies, which she uses as her starting material.
Sheila also founded and curated Tabernacle Folk, a four-year, progressive, commissioning, international music festival (2010-2013). This was voted Critics Choice Best Gig in London, by Time Out.[5][6]
In 2019, she was co-commissioned by Brighton Festival and Glyndebourne to create an autobiographical work about motherhood, performed by 100 women, grandmothers and children, which she spoke about in features on BBC Radio 3 (In Tune) and BBC Radio 4 (Woman's Hour).
Works
Eye to Eye, The Dome, Brighton Festival, 2019[7][8]
Him, Royal Festival Hall/Glasgow's Tramway/Birmingham Rep/Edinburgh Traverse, 2016[9][10][11]
The Question Room, Science Museum, London, 2009
I See Your Beating Heart, Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, London, 2001
Crocodile Looking At Birds, Lyric Hammersmith, London, 1995
My Parents Never Talk To White People, ICA, London, 1994
