Louise Adkins is an artist and researcher, working in the expanded field of memory and heritage studies, chronopolitics and fictioning. Her practice is predominately performative including drawing, artist books, photography, and film. She is interested in the slippage between historical fact and fiction, montaging the historically known and the unknown with cultural references, collective memory, and meta-narrative structures.  Art works often explore the intersection between historicity, media culture and cinema and how they shape a collective memory of the past.

She often works with historical collections, archives, libraries, and heritage sites and is interested in the performative possibilities and narrative potential inherent in revisioning their histories. She has worked extensively with external communities and specialist interest groups, and is interested in the stories, knowledge and skills they bring to the performative works. 

In 2017 she was awarded the Amanda Burton Scholarship at the University of Leeds to undertake a practice-led PhD title: On Smoke & Fog; Performance Revisioning, Remembrance and Reclamation (completed in 2021). Practice research informed a series of performances, photographic portraits, artist books and large-scale text drawings holistically titled Notes for a Performance. This body of work has been performed and exhibited at the Portico Library Manchester, The Tetley Leeds, Temple Bar Gallery Dublin, Ruskin Gallery Cambridge, Holden Gallery, Manchester, Art Gene and Studio 2 Gallery West Yorkshire.

Alongside this she has produced a series of limited-edition artists books  published by Wild Pansy Press, the University of Leeds titled Notes, for a Performance – Final Draft and Notes for a Performance – Weather Permitting. These have been exhibited at national and international artist book fairs including PAGES, The Tetley UK, Malmö Konsthall, Sweden and Espai Barra de Ferro, Barcelona, Spain.

She is an Associate Professor – Postgraduate leading on the Collaborative Practice pathway at Coventry School of Art, and ASPiRE Research Fellow in the Centre for Arts, Memory, and Communities at Coventry University. 

Current practice research titled NOW TIME at the Museum is concerned with curatorial strategies of historical reconstruction, in living museums across the UK and Europe. This practice research is interetsted in the potential of historical reconstruction as a vital means of engaging with questions of historical authenticity, considering how historic timelines and narratives are created and curated. Working with selected living museums, the research aim is to, test alternative approaches to historic reconstruction, that are inclusive and representative of diverse histories. 

Selected Exhibitions &  Performances.

2024/25 On Smoke pt 1 & pt 2 (continued), Proforma/ Begehungen Cheminitz European City of Culture, Germany. 

2024. VENTRILOQUISM: The Lost Voice Spoken by Others the Whitaker Museum & Art Gallery, Yorkshire. 

2023. ON SMOKE. Photographic series and film working colaboratively with Jonathan Purell (UCLAN). Proforma/Begehungen 40 Residency Chemnitz, Germany. 

2023/22. INHALE pause Exhale. Drawing. Studio 2 Gallery, West Yorkshire & Manchester Contemporary Art Fair.

2019/20. Notes for a Performance – Weather Permitting. Extreme Views Artist in Resident. Art Gene, Barrow & South Lakes Archive Service.

2017/19. Notes for a Performance – Revisioning a Smoky Meeting. Artist in Resident. The Tetley Contemporary Art Gallery & West Yorkshire Archive Services, Leeds, The Holden Gallery Manchester &  Temple Bar Gallery Dublin.

2018. ON SMOKE. Photographic series. Ruskin Gallery Cambridge School of Art, Anglia Ruskin Unversity.

Publications.

2018/19.  Notes for a Performance – Weather Permitting 
Wild Pansy Press, University of Leeds. ISBN: 978 - 1 - 900687 - 77 - 5. Featured original performance scripts and commissioned texts by artists Stuart Bastik.

• Exhibited at artist book fairs, PAGES, The Tetley, Leeds; Malmö Konsthall, Sweden; and Espai Barra de Ferro, Barcelona, Spain.

2018. Notes for a Performance – Final Draft   Wild Pansy Press, University of Leeds. ISBN: 978-1-900687-72-0. Featured original performance scripts and commissioned texts by artists Pavel Büchler, Dr Nick Cass.

• Exhibited at artist book fairs, PAGES, The Tetley, Leeds; Malmö Konsthall, Sweden; and Espai Barra de Ferro, Barcelona, Spain.

2017. Pages – In the Library. Wild Pansy Press in Association with The Tetley. University of Leeds.

2026. Made in Translation. Manchester Metropolitan University Press.