The Peak District Pennine landscape and its seasons are the backdrop to everything Tim Copsey makes. Tim’s work floats between function and sculpture, finding deep inspiration in Japanese forms and techniques. 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. Tim fires his unique ceramics in a home built wood kiln. His process communicates spontaneity, subjecting pots to being crushed, broken, fired and re-fired, squeezed and reshaped, using disruption to inspire vibrant character. Further embodying some of the oddities and curiosities of the natural world, Tim’s work demonstrates how beauty resonates from imperfection, irregularity and experimentation.
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’.