Bio
Louise Frances Smith MRSS lives and works in Ramsgate, Kent (UK). Louise’s practice spans sculpture, installation and works on paper. Working with an array of materials including clay, seaweed and bioplastic, Louise creates highly textured surfaces to bring attention to the patterns and textures created by nature, magnifying micro details alongside man-made interventions. By collecting materials from her local coastline to use as materials in her work, Louise’s works are conceptually and physically linked to her local landscape where she takes her inspiration.
Louise graduated from CityLit with a Ceramics Diploma (2019) and from Kingston University with a BA (Hons) Fine Art degree (2009). In 2021 Louise received ‘DYCP’ Arts Council England Funding to research the use of local materials in her work. Last year Louise was selected as a member of the Royal Society of Sculptors.
Recent exhibitions include ‘Entangled’ by Liminal Gallery, Saatchi Gallery, London; ‘Living Materials’, Aspex Portsmouth; ‘It gathered here’, Liminal Gallery, Margate; ‘Meant to Fade’, Laneway Gallery, Ireland; ‘2023 Ingram Prize’, Pavilion Gallery, London & ‘Collect Open 2023’, Somerset House, London.
Solo Exhibitions
2026 The Oyster, Angela’s, Margate (UK) for Off Season.
2025 Living Materials, Aspex Portsmouth (UK).
2024 It gathered here, The Cupboard, Liminal Gallery, Margate (UK).
2023 Sargassum Tide, The Margate School, Margate (UK).
2022 HOLDFAST, Experiments with seaweed, chalk & clay, Joseph Wales Gallery, Margate (UK).
Selected Group Exhibitions
2026 ASSEMBLY, Abject Gallery, Sunderland (UK).
2026 Micromania, Kalkman Gallery, Maastricht (Netherlands), collaboration with Liminal Gallery.
2026 Human Remains, Salon, Margate (UK) presented by Thanet Experimental for Off Season.
2025 Works Cited, The Margate Bookshop, Margate (UK) for Margate Pride Art Trail.
2025 Anchor Points, Das Schaufenster, Seattle (USA).
2025 Entangled, Saatchi Gallery, London (UK), presented by Liminal Gallery.
2024 Nature the Artist, The Great Reimagining exhibition (part of House of Hackney’s Garden of Tomorrow Festival), St Michael + All Angels Church, London (UK).
2023 The 2023 Ingram Prize Exhibition, Pavilion Gallery, Cromwell Place, London (UK).
2023 Meant to Fade, Laneway Gallery, Cork (Ireland).
2023 Collect Open, Collect 2023, Crafts Council, Somerset House, London (UK).
2022 The Wild Collective, collaborative exhibition between Thrown Contemporary & Metafleur at Omved Gardens, London (UK).
2021 ING Discerning Eye, Mall Galleries, London (UK), work selected by Adelaide Damoah.
2020 Online Ceramics Fair, The Hepworth Gallery, Wakefield (UK).
Sargassum Tide,
Collect Open
Sargassum Tide is a body of work featuring works made using wireweed seaweed (Sargassum muticum) and Pacific oysters (Magallana gigas), two ‘non-native’ species currently thriving on the UK coastlines due to climate change.
Louise collected these materials from her local coastline to create experimental work that shows the repercussions of human intervention on our fragile coastal ecosystems. The inspiration for the works comes from epibiosis – the close interaction between two different organisms, the host organism providing an environment for the other which is attached to its living surface. The sculptures and display case works are explained in more detail in the film below.
This project was made possible with an Arts Council England National Lottery Project Grant. The work was selected for and exhibited at the Craft Council’s Collect Open 2023 at Somerset House.
Entangled,
Saatchi Gallery
This multidisciplinary exhibition curated by Liminal Gallery featured painting, drawing, ceramics and sculpture by nine contemporary artists, offering nuanced reflections on the human condition and our inextricable relationship with the natural world.
By engaging with questions of responsibility, belonging and the passage of time, the exhibition revealed the intricate ties that bind us to one another and to the ecosystems we inhabit. The works in Entangled highlight the fragile connections that sustain life on Earth.
Louise exhibited new sculptures primarily using waste oyster shells collected from Angela’s, a seafood restaurant in Margate, and dyed algae yarn which changed colour over the course of the exhibition. The works question longevity of sculptural materials and the idea of biofouling. This is where organisms and sea creatures grow on human made structures (boats/sea defences/bouys) which is seen as a nuisance. The form were inspired by cluster of bouys and empty egg sacks (from whelks & cuttlefish), natural and man-made objects with similarities in appearance.
Residencies 2023-24
In 2023 and 2024 Louise took part in two residencies that created a shift in her practice connecting her work more to drawing and using materials from the landscape to create these texture drawings.
In 2023 Louise spent two weeks at Joya AiR in Almeria, Spain, collecting clay to make into slip and inks (from red earth) to create drawings, capturing some of the textures in the landscape (with paint brushes also made using local materials), the patterns of strata, rocks, clay; the shape the water erosion has left; the black clusters of moss on the rocks.
In 2024 Louise spent two weeks in a vasty different landscape at Mawddach Residency on the Mawddach river estuary in Eryri National Park, Wales. Continuing drawings using local materials to create brushes and inks, Louise continued her exploration of textures and the edges of where her body and the landscape meet. This is a line of enquiring she is still exploring through recent large dawings using seaweed ink and clay.
HOLDFAST
Joseph Wales Gallery
HOLDFAST is the culmination of a year-long Arts Council funded project (DYCP). Louise has experimented with using local materials in her practice, focusing on seaweed, chalk and clay. Inspired by the Thanet coastline where there is an abundance of seaweed in the summer and fallen chalk from the cliffs in winter, the resulting works create a physical and conceptual link back to the landscape.
Louise has delved deeper into her interest in using alternative materials alongside clay but also exploring the materials on their own. This process has opened up avenues of working with waste material from her own practice, residues from making and experimentation – questioning the nature of having a circular practice.
