LOUISE ASHCROFT
Louise Ashcroft is an artist and lecturer in the art department at Goldsmiths and member of the Centre for Art and Ecology. Louise uses participatory comedy and fieldwork processes to make performances, videos, songs, stories and objects addressing how social issues connect to ecology.
Her 2024 performance ‘Nanarchism’ is a funny talk and public workshop about the ghost of her grandmother Violet becoming Creative Director of Just Stop Oil. It’s a celebration of the oddly inventive tactics of eco protesters in the wake of UK laws restricting protest: jigsaws, soup and other things Nana Violet loved are the paraphernalia of the activist heroes who the media frame as ‘violent extremists’. Louise’s work exposes the bizarre surrealism of extraction-based capitalist norms, using laughter to shake passivity in face of inequality and resource exhaustion. She is currently doing fieldwork in waste and recycling centres in London and Exeter as part of a project for Arts Week Exeter 2025. She’s also working with Evolutionary Biologist Duncan Greig to make comedy about social signalling in humans and animals. Other recent projects explore ecologies and sociologies of football culture, the fertility industry and the ‘nuclear family’ as vehicles for questioning extractive, exclusive economic values and proposing playful alternatives.
www.louiseashcroft.org
@louiseashcroft1