About
The Peak District Pennine landscape and its seasons are the backdrop to everything Tim Copsey makes. 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.
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. This is pottery on the border between function and sculpture; in essence vases, bowls, bottles and cups, although these are really just ‘Serving Suggestions’.
Having grown up in a village with a brick works as its sole employer, Tim Copsey’s relationship with clay has been with him his whole life including pottery lessons at school. Working as a filmmaker, he had the opportunity to get involved with clay again 15 years ago and was immediately drawn back to the material. Within a year he had built a wood kiln and set up his studio.
Tim’s work has been exhibited across the UK including Collect, the leading fair in contemporary craft and design in 2022. Tim is a selected member of the CPA and has recently won a AA2A (Artists in Art Schools’ placement. In 2023 his work was published in the book ‘Contemporary British Studio Pottery: Forms of Expression’ by Ashley Thorpe.
