Alan Hathaway is a visual artist who uses installation, print, photography and moving image to engage with aspects of abstract art, architecture and popular music culture.

As a teenager growing up in Britain during the 1980s, he gravitated towards popular music as a form of escape from the mundanity and claustrophobia of suburban life. Labels like Factory, which had grown from the earlier punk movement, articulated a compelling alternate world view – through record sleeves, posters and architectural interventions which drew on the ideas of The Situationist International (SI) and avant-garde art and design practices. 

He uses VHS video, archival publications, YouTube uploads and industrial materials, to examine the ghosts of popular modernist projects like Factory and the rarified forms of high culture they appropriated and critiqued. Through an archival approach to found imagery and diverse material processes, his work reflects on the melancholy lure of nostalgia and the pervasive spectral effect which the past exerts on the present.

Born in London, he has exhibited widely nationally and internationally: Berlin, Copenhagen, Sydney, Melbourne, London, Ukraine, Glasgow, Manchester, Edinburgh and across The North East of England where he is currently based. His work is held in the British Museum’s drawing and print archive as well as numerous private collections internationally. He was shortlisted for the Jerwood Drawing Prize and been artist in residence at Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art (mima). He has received awards from The National Lottery Heritage Fund, DCMS, Arts Council England, Creative UK, CVAN and The North East Artist’s Fund in partnership with BALTIC Gateshead.