Tim Copsey

Ceramics

14 Jul

Written By Sam Hinton

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Tim Copsey describes his work as “beautifully ugly or like space debris”.

Tim describes his work as “beautifully ugly or like space debris”. In essence, he creates bowls, bottles, cups, and vases - although these are really just “serving suggestions” - that inhabit the border between function and sculpture.
The work is playful, sometimes jarring, but ultimately resonant of their materiality and the landscape from which they derive.
For Timothy Copsey (b. 1967, Lancashire, UK), The Peak District Pennine landscape and seasons are the backdrop to everything he makes.
Born into a small community, where everything revolved around the local brickworks just 200 metres from his home; the built environment used these bricks, most neighbours worked there, Tim’s father operated a dragline in the claypits. Before he was school age he was digging and playing with that same bright red clay.
As an undergraduate Tim fully intended to pursue ceramics, but while studying sculpture at Bretton Hall (now the Yorkshire Sculpture Park) he discovered working collaboratively with artists in other disciplines more fulfilling and ultimately built a career in multimedia, film, performance and installation art which saw him working and showing Internationally.
Tim’s return to ceramics in the early 2000s was immediate and visceral. Within a year he established a studio and built a wood-fired kiln in the Peak District. Since then his work has developed through an experimental and playful exploration of simple forms that offer continual adaption, whether that’s through throwing, coiling or slab work.
Tim Copsey has work in many private and public collections.