Laura Potter
Staff details
Laura's work relates to craft: the joy and pain of making things by hand, using deliberate and considered methods.
Laura began teaching at Goldsmiths in 1998. She contributes to management and planning within the School of Design, with a particular focus on Student Experience. She is involved in recruitment and admissions activities, personal and pastoral tutoring, supports colleagues with regulatory issues, and as a maker/practitioner works to enrich and promote the culture of practice-based research within Design.
Academic qualifications
- Royal College of Art : MA Goldsmithing, Silversmithing, Metalwork and Jewellery 1997
- University of Central England : BA [hons] Silversmithing and Jewellery 1993
Teaching and supervision
Laura currently teaches across several modules at both Undergraduate and Postgraduate levels, including BA Design Year 1 (Studio Practice) and Year 3 (Studio Practice Mentoring). She also collaborates with colleagues to write and deliver Transfocality Projects for MA Design: Expanded Practice.
Research interests
Originally trained as a jeweller, Laura expanded her material practice to incorporate a wide range of research methods centred on craft: the pleasures, challenges, hierarchies, and expectations of making things by hand with deliberate and considered techniques. Her work explores themes such as identity construction through personal and domestic artefacts, the creative life of her own doppelgänger, and the material culture of nuclear souvenirs.
Featured publications
2019:
No Salami (ongoing)
No salami (embroidery) is the ongoing act of reformatting a single cross stitch pattern. The pieces are part of a larger body of work involving reproductions of the Mona Lisa in which she appears blur
2022:
Ornamelts
Porcelain ornaments, incapacitated by the materiel of children.
2015:
Fictional Final Goal
Fictional Final Goal was a project that generated over 200 objects, images and texts. The entire project was exhibited as a mixed-media installation in 2015 at Marsden Woo Gallery (London). The theme
2019:
Yield Jigsaws (ongoing)
A series of custom-made jigsaws depicting nuclear test clouds. The KT (kiloton) scale of each test is approximated by the number of pieces in the puzzle. The impossibility of appreciating the 'scale'
2022:
Overworked (ongoing)
Completed tapestries, worked from kits using pre-printed canvas, are re-covered so that the underlying images are obscured. Further labour is invested in the piece, whilst simultaneously concealing a
Publications and research outputs
Show/Exhibition
- Recreational Bombs; Milan = Boom Ward, Matt ; Loizeau, Jimmy ; and Potter, Laura . 2012. Recreational Bombs; Milan = Boom. In: "Hacked – 100 hours of rebellious imagination", La Rinascente, Piazza Duomo, Italy.
Article
- Fantasy Antiques Roadshow Potter, Laura . 2014. Fantasy Antiques Roadshow. Crafting Narratives: Storytelling through Objects,
Art Object
- No salami Potter, Laura . 2024. No salami.
- The Drowned Book Potter, Laura ; and Kristensen, J C. 2024. The Drowned Book.
- Ornamelts Potter, Laura . 2022. Ornamelts.
Artist's Book
- Fictional Final Goal [book] Potter, Laura . 2015. Fictional Final Goal [book].
Digital
- We have always been able to make wonderful things Potter, Laura . 2015. We have always been able to make wonderful things.
Project
- Fictional Final Goal Potter, Laura . 2015. Fictional Final Goal.
Collaborations
DWFE (2009 - 2021) was a disorganised experimental design syndicate founded with Goldsmiths colleagues Jimmy Loizeau and Matt Ward. Their manifesto "Design and the Living Dead" spawned several experimental design proposals including "The Parasitic Spectacular" (aka. The Rifle Tower), "Recreational Bombs" and "The Church of Assisted Belief".
DOMESTIC MONSTERS was formed as a collaborative practice-based group, developing ideas through informal meetings, email and Whatsapp chat. The inaugural exhibition/installation in 2022 included works by Ruby Hoette, Juliette Kristensen, Katherine May, Laura Potter, Corinne Quin, Naama Schendar and Nina Trivedi.