Q&A: Natalie Mitchell, 2026 New Contemporaries Residency Artist

We sat down with Natalie Mitchell, the recipient of the 2026 New Contemporaries residency at Hospitalfield, to find out more about their work and inspirations.

WHAT ARE THE MAIN THEMES OF YOUR PRACTICE?

My work explores how histories live within bodies, landscapes and materials. I’m interested in the ways memory circulates through place  — through voice, movement, shared experiences, touch and trace — and how landscapes can hold echoes of political and personal histories. My process is often unscripted and begins with walking, recording and gathering fragments that surface stories which might otherwise remain unnoticed.

I think of making as a form of listening, of attending to what remains in the land, the archive and the body. Much of my recent work explores colonial legacies, inherited histories and collective memory, and how those histories might be approached through material gestures, sound and moving image.

WHAT INSPIRES YOU?

Growing up in London has been a huge source of inspiration for me. It’s a city shaped by people arriving from many different places and choosing to build lives alongside one another. I’ve always been curious about that, about how we carry different histories and experiences but come to share the same spaces.

That curiosity first drew me to photography, particularly documentary photography, as a way of connecting with the communities around me and finding ways to share people’s stories. Through that process I also began asking questions about my own history and the histories of the places I move through.

Landscape and walking are now central to how I think and make work. Moving through a place slowly allows connections to emerge between environment, history and personal experience. I’m often inspired by the quiet ways landscapes hold memory, as well as by archives, oral histories and everyday objects that carry subtle evidence of the past.

I’m interested in continuing to discover and uncover those histories, especially the ones that were never formally taught but have to be found through listening, research and experience.

WHAT DO YOU HOPE TO ACHIEVE ON THE NEW CONTEMPORARIES RESIDENCY AT HOSPITALFIELD?

During the residency I’m hoping to spend time listening closely to the landscape around Hospitalfield through walking, writing and sound recording. I’m interested in treating the grounds and surrounding environment as a kind of instrument; recording traces of wind, stone, water and ambient sound while gathering fragments of image and text.

I’m also looking forward to returning to analogue processes during the residency, particularly experimenting in the darkroom with 35mm photography and exploring cyanotype studies that respond to local plant life and botanical histories.

Across the two weeks I hope to gather a body of material  — sound recordings, moving image fragments and photographic studies — that will begin to shape a new film I’m developing. This new work connects landscapes in Scotland with my ongoing research into colonial histories and my own family history. More broadly, I’m excited by the opportunity to work at a slower pace and allow the environment to guide the direction of the work.