Sophy King MRSS

Manchester based artist Sophy King investigates a sense of place that includes physical space, human and non-human ecologies, geological time and socioeconomic histories. She examines these through working with found, natural and man-made materials, walking, mapping, installations, photography, film and sound.

Originally trained in 3D Design she worked as a glassblower, art fabricator, set-builder and prop-maker whilst winning commissions to create art in the public realm around the UK, developing her interest in the spaces and environments her work was placed in.

When she started a family she trained in Landscape Architecture, winning the Landscape Institute Graduate Award 2006. She worked in and researched urban and rural landscapes before becoming co-director, with the horticulturalist Helen Meade, of Liquid Sunshine, an art/landscape company that created green roofs and community spaces and gardens.

She continued to develop her environmental art practice, carrying out commissions and residencies. She has exhibited with the print collective PROOF, as well as with sculpture and installations nationally. She has been selected for national and international residencies such as iPark, Connecticut (2016); CAMP, Aulus-les-Bains (2018) and a continuing association with Moors for The Future, Edale (2018). Her public realm commissions include Wave, Saltash; DNA, Leeds and Arrivals Board, Fairhaven. She explores placemaking through socially-engaged and participatory community engagement commissions (Reach Art Project, 2014-15). Interventions on site include planting native species in appropriate/inappropriate ecologies (i-Park residency, 2016; Meadow Manifested, 2015).

In 2019 she gained a MA Fine Art (Distinction) at Manchester School of Art, researching the areas of moorland and lowland peat bog around Manchester. Exploring physical space and found materials, geological time and socioeconomic histories she made ink (Reckonings, 2019), chocolate (The Whole of Recorded History, 2019) and cast peat (Seedbombs, 2019).

In 2021 she was awarded a Liverpool Biennial and a-n Bursary to develop Adjusted Horizons, an audio-visual investigation into cold water swimming, immersion and our relationship to the horizon. She was one of 10 artists from Manchester and Aarhus selected by Castlefield Gallery (UK) and Aarhus Centre for Visual Art (DK) for a collaborative Digital Exchange focussing on low-carbon artmaking. Her research during this residency with the Danish artist Heidi Nikolaissen resulted in The Checklist, a resource for artists to create lower-carbon websites and the sustainartists.info webzine. She has instigated The Rogue Rewilding Project at Rogue Artists Studios and Project Space as a positive statement of intervention in community and ecology to combat climate change.