Biography:
Louise Penrice is a contemporary artist based in Bath, UK, working primarily with handmade paper, plant fibres and installation. Her practice explores the quiet structures of relationship through which plants, material, place and people continually shape one another.
Working with fibres including flax, nettle, iris, hogweed and locally gathered plants, Louise makes sculptural works that often sit between drawing and installation. Paper becomes line, structure and skin: suspended, layered or held in space so that light, movement and shadow become part of the work.
Recent work has increasingly developed in response to place. Common Hours, selected for Wells Art Contemporary 2026, uses locally grown flax to create seven suspended paper panels in response to the Unknown Tomb at Wells Cathedral. Other recent projects include Wild Lace, Geologies of Power at the Holburne Museum, and To Monastery, developed during her MFA at Bath Spa University.
Louise completed an MFA Fine Art with Distinction at Bath Spa University in 2025 and was subsequently selected for the Emerge Artist Residency. Her work has been exhibited with Wells Art Contemporary, the Royal West of England Academy, Fringe Arts Bath and the Holburne Museum.
Selected exhibtions:
September 2026 Wells Art Contemporary, Wells Cathedral — selected for Site 8, The Unknown Tomb
September 2026 Open Exhibition, Royal West of England Academy, Bristol — ‘Wild Lace – IRIS’.
May/June 2026 Fringe Arts Bath — Wild Lace – ‘Nettles’ and ‘Elemental’, shown across two exhibitions.
February 2026 Friends Exhibition, Royal West of England Academy, Bristol — ‘Oak Tapestry’.
September 2025 Open Exhibition, Royal West of England Academy, Bristol — selected exhibition.
September 2025 MFA Degree Show, Bath Spa University — ‘To Monastery’, final Master's project.
July 2025 ‘To Monastery’, Glastonbury Abbey — site-responsive performative installation at Abbey House.
May 2025 ‘Geologies of Power’, Holburne Museum, Bath — Collaborative exhibition exploring power, place & material agency.
Prizes and Awards
February 2026 Molton Brown Artists of Note — winner, Bath.
Residencies
May 2026 Paper.Lab.Berlin Residency, Svetvinčenat, Croatia — international residency and exhibition focused on self-topography and place-based papermaking.
2025–26 Emerge Creative Residency, Bath Spa University — year-long studio residency supporting new work.
Memberships and Community
International Association of Hand Papermakers and Paper Artists (IAPMA).
Bath Women's Fund mentor ·
Artist talks, workshops and creative facilitation.