Laura Copsey

My practice is interdisciplinary and collaborative, blurring with my background as an Occupational Therapist and musician. I am a practice based researcher, interested in traces and the heritage of human activity and endeavour within site specific locations or industries/trades. Most recently I have explored farming, milling and baking as heritage industries using wheat as a material that embeds human ingenuity within landscapes.

My particular focus is the often mysterious relationship between history and the present. There are infinite histories that can be recalled in any moment so I examine what a particular narrative exposes about the present day - often our underlying contemporary concerns and socio-political anxieties. This approach towards time, and the different ways of experiencing and/or documenting it, is my core theme. I use this approach as a methodology. As a result my way of working is time based, participatory and process led. I organise happenings, workshops, performances and conversations where the audience may become collaborators.  Fragments accumulate over time via situations and experience serving as a debris of the experience, rather than a single outcome. 

I make objects and use material to communicate narrative as ‘conversation pieces,’ that invite participation, inspired by ethnography. I am drawn to the grey area between what is real and imagined and exploit this to spark a conversation using humour and the surreal to draw attention to the darker themes beneath the surface. I also use moving image, photography, writing and sound.

Get in touch if you want to work together or if you own a fishing boat…