Tell us about your favourite hang out spot in London or elsewhere? This could be a bar/restaurant, a club, a cultural institution or anywhere you enjoy spending your time.
I am a sucker for the Barbican Centre. They have almost everything I need to be happy - Brutalist architecture, art galleries, a pond, a bunch of cinemas, a theatre, music, a sprawling conservatory... it’s a whole destination, and the best place in London to loiter (or see some great art) at.
What’s your favourite London gallery (you decipher the criteria)? Maybe it has the best arts programme, or the most interesting community, or even just where the best parties happen!
It’s really hard to say as there are so many incredible galleries and art institutions in London, but one that has caught my eye recently is OHSH Projects. They always seem to showcase incredible artists that I’ve never heard of before, who make some really strange things. Studio Chapple also always has a great roster of work, and banging parties.
Can you name your favourite undiscovered or emerging artist (the more obscure the better!). How did you discover them and what do you like about their work?
That is such a difficult question. I know of too many talented people. I will go with Noemi Conan, who is a Polish painter and makes incredible work set in dark forests, featuring mysterious menacing women. I met Noemi when we were both in New Contemporaries in 2021, and I am a total Noemi Conan stan now. Her work is tinged with surreal mythology. Eeriness, humour, seductive, powerful women in a semi-mythological setting... I gasp everytime she makes something new. I also have no doubt that she’s about to have a meteoric rise to fame any moment now.
Can you share a bit about your artistic journey and how you arrived at your current style or medium?
I had a lot of recurring dreams my whole life, and I started recording them when I started University. The stress and anticipation of moving to London set off really weird tooth dreams for me, which I ended up working into printmaking and bad plaster-poured sculptures. I tried out rug-tufting at Goldsmiths as a sort of one off, but I got quite sucked into the medium, and 4 years on I’m still doing it. Our university facilities and staff there were so incredible that it was just the best place to get a solid foundation on rug tufting. I transitioned to a more fantastical, figurative approach around this time, and after covid subsided a bit, I started my Junior Fellowship at Goldsmiths, where I worked on my practice for an additional year after graduating my BA. Having that access for another year helped me really focus and have the confidence to shape my practice in a way that I felt too anxious to before.
I am so inspired by fantastical worlds, by science fiction and horror, and animated films and dungeons and dragons, and dreams and mythology and medieval art.. I finally had the confidence to throw myself into that, in an earnest kind of way. Since then I have been trying to explore the potential of rug-tufting as an image-making medium, and expanding into sculptural elements when I can.
What themes or concepts drive your creative process and influence your work?
My practice explores dreams and mythologies, and this idea of the in-between; fantasy spaces balancing between definitions. Dreams are such a rich starting point for me, and encompass a lot of other themes that interest me; of desire and longing, and of anxiety and horror. The process of dreaming, and your mind becoming both disattached from your body, and this fantasy world happening entirely within your brain set me off thinking about corporeal reality and how extremely strange it is to exist within a real, fleshy, gross, leaky human body. I like to push this thinking, and gestures, like embraces to their logical limit in the imagery of my work; like, when you love someone so much, you just want to entangle your arms together into an eternal gordian knot. There’s a tension between desire and horror, and passion and apathy which I like to play with. Dreams for me also relate to prophecy. I find a lot of inspiration in mythology and looking at religious texts, especially with concepts of hell. I think growing up Polish and Catholic has embedded this in me quite strongly - something in the imagery of angels and devils and hellish torment really speaks to me.
How does your background or personal experience impact the art you create?
My background as an immigrant has totally shaped my art. I was born in Poland and spent my early childhood in Bieszczady Mountains. They feel so distant and isolated from my life in London. I feel a real longing for the mountains and the forests- their magnitude is beautiful and magical and eerie. I have recurring dreams about wolves and bears attacking me in the mountains, and they appear a lot in my works. I have begun exploring Slavic folklore more recently too. In general, growing up in the UK as an immigrant has contributed to this feeling of being in-between - not quite being either thing properly. I feel like my identity feels liminal, and that has seeped into my art.
Are there particular emotions or responses you hope to evoke in viewers of your art?
I try not to preoccupy myself with what other people might think about my art, because I end up not making anything out of anxiety. I try to make things for myself. But I do hope it somewhat evokes that discomfort between desire and horror, and hopefully the humorous aspects are noticed too. I put a lot of time and care into my craft, I try to construct my work as beautifully as possible, so I hope that is at least appreciated.
How do you approach the use of colour, texture, and form in your practice?
In terms of colour, I have developed a palette over the years, influenced a lot by the yarn I use for my rugs- I’m attracted to earthy greens, set against a simple dark navy, a dark crimson and an off-white highlight. I’ll usually use a pop of a bright colour against this to bring out certain details. That’s my favourite colour palette, though I will venture into others too - I always try to keep to 5 colours or less if I can, again influenced by my tufting technique.
Texture definitely ties into my use of colour; there’s something about the nature of tufting and knitted pieces which gives them a computer pixel-like quality- since they’re made of stitches and dots, they make me think of 8-bit games like on the gameboy and arcades, and I think that sort of style of image making has influenced my style a lot. That is, creating images from minimalistic colour palettes, from dots to make that tonal texture. I like the tactility of textile work, though I think in a weird way I got into it for that image quality rather than anything else. I think about form through drawing, which I do a lot of in prep for each work or even when exploring ideas. They’re more like quick sketches rather than detailed drawings. I love the presence and weight of rugs, though I’m still trying to figure out how to best utilise their formal qualities to make the most impact.
Are there specific artists, movements, or cultural influences that inspire your work?
I take inspiration from a lot of different places. In terms of artists, I think Alina Szapocznikow has really influenced me, and I admire her so much. She was a Polish sculpture and made these sensual yet menacing figurative pieces. Fragments of the body posed as domestic objects, frozen between ecstasy and horror. I was obsessed with Zdzisław Beksiński as a child, another Polish artist, who painted these desolate post-apocalyptic landscapes with quite tortured looking, but also sometimes quite sexy figures and creatures - I think somewhere along the way I’ve picked up his influence again.
I get so much inspiration from outside of modern and contemporary art too. Hieronymus Bosch and his chaotic hellscapes also captivated me a few years ago, and in general medieval portrayals of hell. Junji Ito, a horror manga artist - his series, Uzumaki is just one of the most incredible graphic novels out there.
Horror in general, cosmic and bodily; Ridley Scott’s Alien rewired my brain as a teenager. As mentioned previously, I also love animated films; they can be so rich and surreal, just bring together all the arts. Laloux’s Fantastic Planet is one of my favourites, and I love apocalyptic anime like Otomo’s Akira or Studio Ghibli’s Princess Mononoke, and Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind. Neon Genesis Evangelion is also so visually rich with its apocalyptic religious symbolism. I could keep going on and on!
Can you discuss a particular piece featured in the exhibition and the story or concept behind it?
The central Hellmouth is the second in a series. I discovered these in the depths of my reading about hell. They originated in Anglo-Saxon art, but spread to Christian iconography. They’re meant to symbolise the entrance to hell, as the mouth of a gaping monster. I wanted to create something contemporary rather than just recreating a Medieval image in rug form. I had this idea about these forgotten souls in Hell, like they know they have totally fucked it- no one is coming to save them. Instead of trying to change their conditions in any way - I don’t know, try to rebel, they sort of just accept their fate. This sort of apathetic ‘ah it could always be worse, let’s make the most of this’ attitude that I feel is so pervasive today, especially with the looming environmental disasters ahead of us. Hopefully the humour shines through this piece!
What role does cross-disciplinarity play in your artistic practice, if any? And if not, in what ways does Palmer Gallery’s focus on cross-disciplinarity challenge your artistic practice?
Play is essential in my creative process, and I think it is so important to see human creativity unfold across all sorts of different mediums. I think playing around with different mediums - combining textile with sculpture- is a little bit more challenging, and I think it gets you to engage directly with the tactility and presence of the object in front of you.
Can you share a bit about your creative workspace and how it contributes to your process?
I have a little studio in SET Woolwich, an artist studio in an old HMRC tower block. I share it with my studio mate, Katya Rogers, who makes jewellery and tinkers with strange objects we found in the Thames. It is so great to have someone to share your space to check in with - makes you feel like you’re not just going crazy in a pile of your stuff. I am very messy though, and I love to collect objects and images and pile them up until they stew into ideas. I also work across notebooks which I like to go back to every so often and see if anything pops out to me again.
Are there rituals, routines or even objects that help inspire you or allow you to maintain your artistic momentum?
Regular drawing always helps me keep my creative juices flowing, but I’m terrible at doing it consistently. It is the best way for me to keep my momentum up, doing a few pages of scribbles a day. Coming back to them literally always helps me see and understand my thinking better. I also like to make extremely specific playlists of music which make me feel a certain way to help me get into a creative headspace- the more anxious and energetic, the better.
Can you share any challenges or discoveries you encountered while preparing your work for Palmer Gallery’s first exhibition? How did these experiences influence your artistic decisions?
Getting free reign to make something for a new space is a little nerve wracking, but it is great to be trusted with the process. When you’re not rushed and trusted to do your own thing, it definitely allows you to take extra care with your practice and ultimately make something worthwhile. How do you see your work evolving in the future, both stylistically and thematically? I’m hoping to have more space in the future to create bigger work, and equally more time to be more ambitious and sprawling in its imagery. I’m hoping to delve deeper into folklore, and even spend some time in Bieszczady and be able to take more inspiration from there and maybe make some art over there too. There are so many crafts I wish to explore, I basically want to try everything out. I hope to bring in more sculptural elements into my work in the future.
Are there specific goals or aspirations you have for your artistic career in the coming years?
I think I will be ready for a solo show soon - it would be amazing to bring together different ideas into a space and let them interact with each other and breathe. I have a dream of creating a soundtrack for a body of work too. I would also love to do something in Poland, but that’s simply for personal satisfaction rather than necessarily a career goal.
