Lesley Hilling was born in Reading and studied at Berkshire College of Art & Design. She currently lives and works in London, making sculptures from recycled wood and found objects. These can take the form of walls or freestanding towers with many compartments, sections and doors - lots of disparate elements put together into a complicated but ordred whole. She says that she is influenced by Joseph Cornell, Kurt Schwitters, Susan Hiller, Christian Boltanski. 

'I build constructions and incorporate things I've collected into them. I make something new out of objects that had a different life before. My aim is to create a unified whole that is at once scuptural in its three-dimensional form and painterly as each piece of wood I use is selected for its colour, texture and tonal quality. 

'The idea of constructing boxes to house collected objects evolved into multi-story boxes - towers. Using recycled wood from pianos and old furniture, they are very personal items about the environment I grew up in... There is very little planning and all the towers have been reworked several times - with whole sections being torn down, redesigned and reconstructed, so that the works grow organically... The  tower multiplies, adds another dimension to that frequently used form, the artist's box construction. The pieces refer to the works of Joseph Cornell in their evocations of the strangeness of childhood and the poetic juxtapositions of ephemera.'