Louise Ashcroft
Staff details
Links
Humorously anarchic stories about disrupting social norms and power structures, often as performance/video/animation
Louise’s performances, videos, animations and installations chronicle her playfully disruptive investigations into the conventions of ordinary places like shopping centres, trade fairs, internet spaces, stranger’s homes, museums and the street. By directly challenging the rules and logic of such contexts through her interventions and overly-detailed comical analyses, she questions the bizarre norms of late capitalism and catalyses new myths; frequently bringing the viewer along as a co-conspirator through interactive workshops and experimental experiences which rethink social protocol. Capitalism is the clown, not Louise - she's just there for the ride. Louise is currently building a no-frills community sperm bank outside her house using an old B&Q bird box for her forthcoming stage show 'Crowdmum' which explores alternatives to conventional family structures.
Academic qualifications
- MA Cultural and Critical Studies, Birkbeck, University of London 2008
- BFA Ruskin School of Art, University of Oxford 2004
Research interests
Interests include: Comedy, radical education, hackathons and ethical hacking, marketing, design, the internet, memes, trash, alternative family structures, queer theory, queer practice, belief systems, psychology, everyday life, social class, anarchism, technology, characterisation, improvisation, collage, storytelling, interventions, activism, sports, performance art, archives, site specific work, walking, script-writing, found objects, neurodiversity, alternative ways of living, counterculture, ecology, food and sustainability.
Featured publications
2020:
Dead Relevant, 2020.
Meme-riddled film about the life of Nic, a character in a 17th Century Frans Hals painting, who is turned into a jpeg and uploaded onto the internet where he seeks relevance as an influencer, beardpre
2021:
Uplands: Utopia I.O.U
Solo exhibition at Bobinska Brownlee, London. Sit on bespoke drain covers to watch a 20-minute animation made from trash
2018:
Boring Talks: Argos Catalogue, Call Centres and Breakfast Cereal
Three BBC Sounds audio performances psychoanalysing and speculating about everyday phenomena. Search all episodes on BBC Sounds to see all three.
2017:
I'd Rather Be Shopping
Solo show at Arebyte Gallery. Works made in response to an unofficial residency in a Westfield shopping mall, notably the undercover video poem Unicorns of Westfield.
2019:
Awkward Stowage, performance at Art Night London
Rambling through treasures salvaged from local waste tips, charity shops, and cupboards under the stairs, Louise and her collaborator Fritha Jenkins conjure darkly comic gestures and narratives.
Publications and research outputs
Art Object
Ashcroft, Louise. 2018. Street Racket.
Ashcroft, Louise. 2018. Urban Investopedia.
Broadcast
Ashcroft, Louise. 2020. BBC Sounds - The Boring Talks, #52 - Breakfast Cereals.
Ashcroft, Louise. 2018. Boring Talks #06 - The Argos Catalogue, The Boring Talks - BBC Radio.
Film/Video
Ashcroft, Louise. 2020. Dead Relevant.
Ashcroft, Louise. 2017. Unicorns of Westfield.
Performance
Ashcroft, Louise. 2023. Bird Hut Sperm Bank. In: "Women and Children First festival", Viernulvier, Ghent, Belgium, 1 - 11 March 2023.
Ashcroft, Louise. 2018. All Our Lives. In: "All Our Lives", Salisbury Arts Centre, 4th Oct to 10th Nov 2018.
Ashcroft, Louise. 2018. Talking to a Brick Wall. In: "Talking to a Brick Wall", CCA Goldsmiths, United Kingdom, 23rd September 2018.
Show/Exhibition
Ashcroft, Louise. 2021. Uplands: Utopia I.O.U. In: "Uplands: Utopia I.O.U", Bobinska Brownlee Gallery, London, United Kingdom, 22 April - 23 May 2021.
Ashcroft, Louise. 2019. Whose Croytopia?. In: "Fungus Press Residency: 'Whose Croytopia?'", Turf Projects, Croydon, United Kingdom, 2 February - 2 April 2019.
Ashcroft, Louise. 2018. Party Platforms: Deptford X Special Project Commission 2018. In: "Deptford X Festival 2018", 1 Market Yard, Deptford, United Kingdom, Project ran January to September 2018, with exhibition 21st - 30th September 2018.
Conferences and talks
2019:
Speaking Fiction to Power
Keynote at 36th Chaos Communication Congress (2019, Leipzig). CCC is an annual conference organized by the Chaos Computer Club.
