Her studio practice incorporates purpose built habitats, alternative photography processes, scientific methodologies and community based workshops as a means for this practice become an inclusive and collective process of curiosity, engagement and discussion of biodiversity and our surrounding natural environment. After completing her PhD in Studio Art in 2012 at Burren College of Art, Hutton developed the college’s Art and Ecology MFA based on her doctoral research. She worked as the Researcher/ Evaluator for An Urgent Enquiry (2017- 2021) a series of think tank sessions and residencies that address the intersection between art, biodiversity and climate change. A member of the Ecoart Network, Hutton is a contributing author to Ecoart in Action, a collection of essays and provocations on pedagogy and ecoarts practice. She exhibited a series of purpose built habitats and collaboratively produced sculptures as part of  Home: Being and Belonging in Contemporary Ireland at The Glucksman (IE) and was the Artist in Residence for the Soil Project Residency with the Butler Gallery (IE) for 2021. She is currently a member of Roots for the Future, a Radical Climate Thinking Group for and by artists in association with Project Arts Centre. Her work is supported by the Arts Council.

Links to Published Research:

The published reports for An Urgent Enquiry are available here: http://www.anurgentenquiry.ie/index.html. More information regarding the Soil Project Residency is available through Butler Gallery’s website: https://www.butlergallery.ie/soil-project-building-mycelial-communities An artist talk linked to the Glucksman’s Home: Being and Belonging in Contemporary Ireland exhibition is available here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JR_mppOmfRI An article published through Artizein: Arts and Teaching Journal, Art and Ecology in the West of Ireland is available here: https://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/atj/vol2/iss2/5/. Her case study of the Art and Ecology programme published in EcoArt in Action: Activities, Case Studies and Provocations for Classrooms and Communities is available here: https://nyupress.org/9781613321485/ecoart-in-action/

Research Interests

Ecoart, participatory and social practices, reciprocity, speculative ethics, entangled becoming, mesh mates, the Symbiocene

Teaching Philosophy

My role as a teacher is to facilitate students’ growth as artists, through the development of their critical thinking capabilities in formal analysis as well as contextual analysis. I strongly believe that critical thinking works in conjunction with commitment to one’s practice and the continual refinement of technique in the creation of an artwork or an essay. Central to the students’ experience is learning the importance of process through experimentation, risk taking, enquiry, creative problem solving, active engagement and, not least of all, seeing. I aim to establish an environment that is simultaneously challenging, stimulating and supportive as students learn to negotiate the ways in which they construct meaning.