Natalia Zagórska-Thomas
About the artist
Polish/British visual artist, art conservator and curator. Trained at Canberra School of Art (Australia) and St Martins & Central School of Art (London) she has exhibited in Australia, Spain, Cuba, Germany, Italy and the UK at institutions such as Victoria & Albert Museum (London), Royal Festival Hall (London), Barbican Centre (London); Sotheby’s (London); Galerie Housegeburt (Stuttgart);El Centro Provincial de Artes Plásticas y Diseño, (Havana). She works as a textile conservator for national museums and galleries in the UK and abroad.
Natalia is an owner/curator of an independent gallery in London called Studio ExPurgamento, which shows work of international and British artists in all media. She has curated group exhibitions at Studio ExPurgamento (London), One Paved Court (London), St Martin’s Church Waterloo (London), Bookartbookshop (London), Galeria Isolo17 (Verona) and others.
As an artist, curator and art conservator Zagorska-Thomas is guided by Tadeusz Kantor’s assertion that “an (art) object exists between eternity and the rubbish heap”. She aims to explore the notions of interpretation and the agency of the ordinary object collected as an artefact in contemporary culture. Her performances are an extension of her practice and are intended as condensed moments of ordinary experience. This is the first time any of her work will be shown in her native country.
Natalia will present two short performances centered on ordinary objects (turned into art objects), acting as a conduit to express universal themes through what appear to be prosaic private moments often dismissed as insignificant by most artistic cannons. It is possible that what makes them more universal than any other accepted grand theme commonly assumed to signify the human condition is the very fact that they have been almost universally passed over in all societies throughout the globe and throughout recorded history.”