Louise Mackenzie

Louise Mackenzie is an artist and researcher based in Newcastle, UK.

Working across mediums and often engaging with fields outside of the cultural sector, her interdisciplinary practice focuses on art’s relationship with the environment, articulated through process, chance, appropriation and translation. With an interest in experimental and experiential practices, sound and new/found media play an important role in her work. Mackenzie has created live genetic modification sound performances, public conversations with future species, techniques for listening to microbes, the translation of 100-year-old dust into a composition for church organ and scores for listening with nonhumans.

Her artworks have been exhibited nationally and internationally, including ZKM (Germany), Charles Darwin House (London), the National Library of Spain (Madrid), Lumiere (Durham), Summerhall (Edinburgh), BALTIC39 (Newcastle) and Basement 6 Collective (Shanghai). She has written for Bloomsbury, Manchester University Press, Intellect, Springer and MIT Press. Recent works include Shit Happens! at Science Gallery London; (Trying and Failing to) Listen Carefully (2024) at CCA, Glasgow and BE THE SEA (2023) at The Word, South Shields.

Mackenzie holds a PhD in Fine Art, is a director of ASCUS Art and Science, Edinburgh and a lecturer in Contemporary Art Practice at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, Dundee.