Our People
Dr Laura Hopes
Lecturer in BA (Hons) Fine Art
<p dir="ltr">Dr Laura Hopes is an artist, writer, researcher and lecturer on BA (Hons) Fine Art at Arts University Plymouth. Her work looks at relationships between people and land, and at how agriculture, extraction, industry and colonisation continue to shape places in a changing climate.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Laura works across sculpture, installation, film, sound, performance, writing and participation. She often starts with agricultural by-products, industrial structures, found archives or knowledge held by people with long experience of a place. Collaboration is central to her practice. She describes herself as a “vulnerable practitioner”: open to uncertainty, failure and to other people changing the direction of the work.</p>
<p dir="ltr">For <em>Functional Disobedience: A Vow for Nature</em>, commissioned for Remember Nature 2025, Laura worked with children from High Street Primary Academy. Together they built structures from wooden scaffolding poles and reclaimed clamps, exploring how urban trees are noticed and protected as the city changes. The work was shown at KARST in Plymouth. An accompanying call-to-action film was screened at Tate Modern.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Her 2026 solo installation <em>PORTALS</em> at Traction Project Space in Exeter drew on Cornish mining landscapes and remnants from a thatched farm on the north coast to consider extraction, migration, waste and what places retain. For <em>Let’s SEA Your Tatts</em>, made with LOW PROFILE, she helped gather the stories behind nearly 300 maritime tattoos. The project resulted in three film-poems, a temporary tattoo parlour and a public sharing event for Plymouth’s Sea for Yourself programme.</p>
<p dir="ltr">In 2026, Laura was selected for The Cornwall Workshop at Kestle Barton and received an a-n Artists’ Bursary for 2025–26. She is a member of the artist collective Still Moving, a studio holder at KARST and Creative Network Lead for the Creative Coastal Communities Network and Programme at Take A Part.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Before joining Arts University Plymouth, Laura taught Fine Art and Contemporary Art Practice at the University of Plymouth from 2020 to 2025 as an Associate Lecturer, Module Lead and Stage Lead. She holds a PhD titled <em>Being Vulnerable: Distances of the Sublime Anthropocene</em>, an MA with Distinction in Contemporary Arts Practice and a first-class BA (Hons) Fine Art. Her earlier qualifications include a PGCE in Primary Education and a BA (Hons) African Studies from SOAS.<br /></p>
<ul><li><p dir="ltr">2026: a-n Artists’ Bursary 2025–26. The awarding organisation is now known as Artists Now.</p></li><li><p dir="ltr">2022: Science New Wave Award for <em>When Land Becomes Soil</em>, with Still Moving, WarnerMedia, USA.</p></li><li><p dir="ltr">2021: Greenpeace International grant for <em>NO NEW WORLDS</em> at COP26 in Glasgow, with Still Moving.</p></li><li><p dir="ltr">2021: National Lottery grant for <em>COP26 Interventions</em> in Glasgow, with Still Moving.</p></li><li><p dir="ltr">2018: Arts Council England and Plymouth Culture Arts grants for <em>Speedwell</em>, a Mayflower 400 commission, with Still Moving.</p></li></ul>
<ul><li><p dir="ltr">Member, Artists Now, formerly a-n.</p></li><li><p dir="ltr">Co-founder and member, Still Moving artist collective.</p></li><li><p dir="ltr">Studio holder, KARST, Plymouth.</p></li></ul>
<ul><li><p dir="ltr">Relationships between people and land in rapidly changing climates.</p></li><li><p dir="ltr">Climate change and colonisation, particularly in relation to agricultural, extractive and settler-colonial land practices.</p></li><li><p dir="ltr">The Anthropocene and the sublime.</p></li><li><p dir="ltr">Vulnerability, friendship, collaboration and unknowing as artistic research methods.</p></li><li><p dir="ltr">Socially engaged and participatory art.</p></li><li><p dir="ltr">Heritage land practices, agricultural by-products, environmental imbalances, industrial structures, found archives and discarded materials.</p></li><li><p dir="ltr">Expanded practice across sculpture, installation, film, sound, performance, writing and participation.</p></li></ul>
<p dir="ltr"><strong>Selected exhibitions, installations and commissions</strong></p>
<ul><li dir="ltr"><p dir="ltr">2026: <em>PORTALS</em>, solo installation, Traction Project Space, Exeter.</p></li><li dir="ltr"><p dir="ltr">2026: <em>Cartographies of Care – An exhibition of Women/Land/Art</em>, Southcombe Barn, Dartmoor.</p></li><li dir="ltr"><p dir="ltr">2026: <em>INSIDE UFO</em>, sculptural test-space, KARST, Plymouth.</p></li><li dir="ltr"><p dir="ltr">2025–2026: <em>Let’s SEA Your Tatts</em>, with LOW PROFILE, Sea for Yourself commission and public sharing event, Plymouth.</p></li><li dir="ltr"><p dir="ltr">2025: <em>Functional Disobedience: A Vow for Nature</em>, Remember Nature 2025 commission, shown at KARST, Plymouth; accompanying call-to-action film screened at Tate Modern, London.</p></li><li dir="ltr"><p dir="ltr">2025: <em>Cuckoo</em>, <em>Wild</em>, Royal Albert Memorial Museum & Art Gallery, Exeter.</p></li><li dir="ltr"><p dir="ltr">2025: Residency and exhibition, Back Lane West, Redruth.</p></li><li dir="ltr"><p dir="ltr">2024: <em>Not a (Field)Guide to the Future</em>, with Dr Katharine Earnshaw, included in <em>Dartmoor: A Radical Landscape</em>, Royal Albert Memorial Museum & Art Gallery, Exeter.</p></li><li dir="ltr"><p dir="ltr">2024: <em>Flock Stones</em>, Exeter Contemporary Open, Exeter Phoenix.</p></li><li dir="ltr"><p dir="ltr">2019: <em>Otolith</em>, artist-in-residence commission, National Marine Aquarium, Plymouth.</p></li><li dir="ltr"><p dir="ltr">2019: <em>Lacuna</em>, <em>Unbounded</em>, Eden Project, Cornwall.</p></li><li dir="ltr"><p dir="ltr">2015: <em>Cargo: The Island</em>, LASALLE College of the Arts, Singapore.</p></li></ul>
<p dir="ltr"><strong>Selected research, residencies and publications</strong></p>
<ul><li dir="ltr"><p dir="ltr">2026: Selected participant, The Cornwall Workshop, Kestle Barton.</p></li><li dir="ltr"><p dir="ltr">2021: “Social Distance”, journal paper, Issue 10, LASALLE College of the Arts, Singapore.</p></li><li dir="ltr"><p dir="ltr">2020: <em>Being Vulnerable: Distances of the Sublime Anthropocene</em>, PhD thesis, University of Plymouth.</p></li><li dir="ltr"><p dir="ltr">2020: <em>And the Crowd Goes Wild</em>, publication and film, b-side Festival, Portland.</p></li><li dir="ltr"><p dir="ltr">2020: “Ruins”, <em>Theorem</em> publication, Cambridge School of Art, Anglia Ruskin University.</p></li><li dir="ltr"><p dir="ltr">2020: “Vertex+Reflex”, Hybrid Labs publication, Aalto University, Helsinki.</p></li><li dir="ltr"><p dir="ltr">2019–2020: Artist in residence, National Marine Aquarium, Plymouth.</p></li></ul>
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