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Laura Grace Simpkins

Tisbury Star Coral (2022)
Tisbury Star Coral (2022)Also known as ‘starry stone’ due to the appearance of its tiny siliconised corals which collectively call to mind a pollutionless night sky, Tisbury Star Coral is only found around Tisbury, Wiltshire and no where else in the world. This local Jurassic legend is said by anthropologist K P Oakley to be the first example of provable aesthetic appreciation as it was discovered in graves of Archeulian hunters who lived 200,000 years ago in Swanscombe, Kent–120 miles away from Tisbury.
 
I bought this piece of Tisbury Star Coral from a reputable source online, though I have since found smaller fragments up on the hills to the north of Tisbury and keep them on my bedroom windowsill.

I’m a creative writer and multimedia artist. I like making work about things that come out of the ground and how we use and relate to them.

My six-part serial ‘Lithium Mania’ was comissioned by the Wellcome Collection in 2021. Now I’m developing my first book and an accompanying body of audiovisual work.

Further essays and articles have been published by the Wellcome Collection and by The Guardian, The Polyphony, Photo Monitor, and others. 

I edit and write book reviews for Medical Humanities, a subsidary of the British Medical Journal. My reviews have also appeared in New Scientist.

My solo performances have been broadcast on BBC Radio and featured by Cambridge University Museums. I collaborate on audio with Alice Boyd. We were selected for In The Dark’s New Voices of 2022.