Laura Copsey

About

I am an experimental illustrator and practice based researcher from East Anglia, now living and working in London.  My work is interdisciplinary and collaborative, informed by my background as a therapist and musician. 

I'm an excavator of stories, inspired by heritage, archaeology and geo-poetics. I'm drawn to the gaps in knowing as sites for fertile creative action and enjoy adapting field work methods for creative endeavour. My ways of working are time based, participatory and process-led often focused on marginalised histories or speculative futures. I organise expeditions, workshops, walks and live action research where the audience may become collaborators. I am interested in innovative, experimental and non-hierarchical methods of mutual learning and creativity. 

I make narrative artefacts which use deliberate material to evoke a sense of place and story. This may include use of historic craft methods, cameraless photography, collage, sound and moving image, to activate places, histories, or regional museum collections. 

In 2021 was illustrator in residence at the Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration, alongside collaborator, designer Philip Crewe. Together we researched the marginalised heritage of the New River in London exhibited during London Design Week and Open House Festival 2022.