About Nell

Nell Catchpole is a sound artist, composer, and violinist. Her work grows from practices of listening and sounding, exploring relationships between people, materials, place and ecology. Through installation, performance and collaboration, she creates situations for listening differently — to the environment and to one another.

Her recent work has developed through sustained engagement with particular places and the people connected to them, bringing sound into conversation with memory, material and environmental change.

Recent projects include Unbeaten Valley, commissioned by MIMA; Transported, made as Artist in Residence for the Most Creative Station programme at Middlesbrough Railway Station; and Gongs of Teesside, developed through her ongoing work across the Tees Valley.

Nell is Co-Director of Sonic Arts Week, at The Auxiliary in Middlesbrough, and co-founder of We Make Sound, a free creative music project for young people in Hartlepool. She is currently a PhD researcher at Newcastle University.

At Guildhall School of Music & Drama, Nell runs the experimental curatorial project Unfinished with Jan Hendrickse and Lara Agar, and co-directs the interdisciplinary music and visual arts project MAP/making with Sophie Clements (Royal College of Art).

As a composer, Nell has made work with choreographer Hofesh Shechter (Barbican, Royal Opera House, Sadler’s Wells), theatre director Lucy Bailey and poet Kae Tempest.

As a violinist, she has worked for three decades with Brian Eno, including Drawn From Life and projects with John Cale and U2, and has performed with artists including Nigel Kennedy, Palestinian band Sabreen, Jocelyn Pook and Fred Frith.

Nell co-founded and toured internationally with music theatre company the gogmagogs (1995–2007).