Louise Adkins is an artist and researcher whose practice is rooted in performance and extends across drawing, artist books, photography, and film. Her work often engages with historical collections, archives, libraries, and heritage sites, exploring the performative possibilities and narrative potential within their histories. Through this process, she creates artworks that blur the boundaries between historical fact and fiction, interrogating how media culture and cinema shape collective memory.
Adkins frequently collaborates with communities and specialist interest groups, valuing the stories, knowledge, and skills they bring to her performative works. In 2017, she was awarded the Amanda Burton Scholarship at the University of Leeds to undertake a practice-led PhD titled On Smoke & Fog: Performance Revisioning, Remembrance and Reclamation (completed in 2021). This research informed a series of performances, photographic portraits, artist books, and large-scale text drawings collectively titled Notes for a Performance. These works have been exhibited and performed at European Capital of Culture: Chemnitz 2025, The Tetley (Leeds), Temple Bar Gallery (Dublin), Art Gene (Barrow-in-Furness), The Holden Gallery (Manchester), and The Whittaker Museum & Art Gallery (West Yorkshire).
Her limited-edition artist books, published by Wild Pansy Press, include Notes for a Performance – Final Draft and Notes for a Performance – Weather Permitting. These works have been exhibited at national and international artist book fairs, including PAGES at The Tetley (UK), Malmö Konsthall (Sweden), and Espai Barra de Ferro (Barcelona, Spain).
Louise is Associate Professor in the School of Art and Creative Industries and an ASPiRE Research Fellow in the Centre for Arts, Memory, and Communities at Coventry University.