Helen Ottaway Somerset, United Kingdom

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Composer, pianist and installation artist creating site-specific, collaborative and participatory work. Artistic director of Artmusic.

Helen Ottaway is a composer, pianist and installation artist who often works alongside other art forms and artists. These interactions with other disciplines and her encounters with composer and conceptualist John Cage in the 1980s have influenced the way she plans, composes and places her music. With Artmusic (formed 1999) she creates sound installations and performances for indoor and outdoor spaces, sometimes involving the stretching of sound and music across urban and rural landscapes.

Commissions include Salisbury Cathedral, The National Review of Live Art, Cork 2005, European Capital of Culture, London Borough of Tower Hamlets, and BBC2. Her work has been performed in many locations including the ICA, London, a disused quarry in Somerset, and remote woodlands in Dorset and Terschelling for the Inside Our Dorset and Oerol Festivals.

In 2017 she took part in the Sura Medura International Artists Residency in Sri Lanka, an experience which has influenced her working practice and given rise to a series of new projects, currently in development. She is inspired by particular sites, buildings and landscapes and her work is often connected with water.

Helen's music and soundscapes can be purchased through Bandcamp (https://helenottaway.bandcamp.com) or via the Artmusic website (www.artmusic.org.uk). Many of her and Artmusic's existing performance and installation projects are available for booking and she welcomes commissions for new work.