Biography

Hannah Ireland (Ngāti Hine, Ngāpuhi, b.1995) is a contemporary artist based in Tāmaki Makaurau, Auckland.

Her practice is rooted in psychological observation, relational experience, and the subtle intricacies of everyday life. Working primarily through painting and drawing, Ireland creates expressionistic portraits and abstracted forms that engage with whakapapa, cultural memory, and the emotional landscapes of lived experience. These elements often emerge as intuitive impressions reflecting the harmonies and frictions of being in relation: to people, place, time, and history.

At the heart of her work is a negotiation between visibility and concealment, control and instinct. Figures develop through layering, reworking, and disruption, resulting in images that feel both intentional and provisional. Some are boldly reductive, others barely there; some solitary, others leaning toward each other in quiet, tender ways.

Ireland works across a wide variety of surfaces and mediums, embracing improvisation and material responsiveness. This approach allows for distortion, fragmentation, and uncertainty, producing figures that hover between clarity and ambiguity—half-formed, smudged, and suggestive. Ambiguity remains central to her work, inviting viewers to interpret, project, and reassemble meaning within the layered, tactile space of her paintings.

Works
Installation shots
Hannah Ireland
It feels so good to be alive
Jhana Millers Gallery
2022
Exhibitions
Press
Video