Tim Copsey

 The Peak District Pennine landscape and its seasons are the backdrop to everything Tim makes. This is pottery on the border between function and sculpture; in essence vases, bowls, bottles and cups, although these are really just ‘Serving Suggestions’. Works such as the Waterfall pieces are directly inspired by observing and depicting how water races over and around rocks, glistening and reflective, as direct a reference to pouring as the onomatopoeic ‘tok tok’ of the tokkuri form. Tim finds deep inspiration in Japanese forms and techniques, early experiments in camouflage such as dazzle, Prehistoric ceramic forms and Situationist art.

In addition to being a potter, he works with artists and creative organisations as a film maker. This affords him the opportunity to investigate how ceramics and film overlap. “I’m interested in the performative nature of how film can incorporate its subject”, this has resulted in a series of short films called ‘Serving Suggestions’.

Surfaces are built up over multiple firings, often starting in the wood kiln and ending with lustres. His work has been described as ‘beautifully ugly’ or like ‘space debris’. He hopes that the work is playful, elemental if occasionally jarring or surprising and ultimately resonant of their materiality and the landscape from which they derive.

CV

Representation

County Hall Pottery