Laura Copsey

Laura is an artist and a practice-based researcher from East Anglia. Her ways of working are informed by her background as an occupational therapist (specialising in learning disability and mental health) and as a musician playing in bands for around 20 years. Her work is interdisciplinary and collaborative but methodologically rooted in illustration and visual storytelling.

Laura’s work is inspired by heritage, place and geo-poetics, often engaging with gaps in knowledge as fertile spaces for creative action. Laura's approach is adventure-led and process-based, shaped by situations, encounters and conversations where the audience may become collaborators. Her work may involve repurposing objects, reenacting historic craft methods, experimental cameraless photography, collage, sound and moving image. Gathering, noticing, questioning (existing) are central to her ways of understanding the world and making new work, which may take the form of interactive exhibitions, socially engaged projects, expeditions, walks, events, or music on themes such as islandness, speculative futures and marginalised histories.

Since graduating from the Royal College of Art in 2018, Laura has worked with institutions such as the London Museum, the Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration and the Museum of English Rural Life. She has exhibited or organised events for Chisenhale Gallery, London Design Week, Open House and Art Licks, among others. In 2021–22, she was Illustrator in Residence at the House of Illustration, with designer Philip Crewe exploring the heritage and landscape of the New River. Most recently she was commissioned by UCL Trellis 5 to lead Rewilding Healthcare - a creative arts and health project with palliative care consultant and researcher Sarah Yardley, based at Cody Dock. 

Laura continues to make music, her current band is Firestations. (Lost Map Records) Their most recent album ‘Many White Horses’ grew from shared experience during the site-specific sailing residency she leads annually in the Hebrides, with Sail Britain. She also organises the Sonic Healing collective who design interactive and immersive improv music scenarios for one person at a time - please invite us to support a ritual near you.

• MA Experimental Communication (Royal College of Art)
• BSc Occupational Therapy (University of East Anglia)