Lost Property / Natalia Zagórska-Thomas

Before life brought her to Australia and then to the United Kingdom, Natalia Zagórska-Thomas grew up in Poland. As a little girl she was exposed to Tadeusz Kantor’s theatre performances, through which she experienced a very specific bygone world, resurrected and given alternative meaning by objects that were seemingly dead (deceased) but which in reality contained new, unknown forms of  life. Kantor was a devoted disciple of Bruno Schulz who wrote in a letter to Stanisłąw Ignacy Witkiewicz:  „The substance of reality exists in a state of constant fermentation, germination, hidden life. It contains no dead, hard, limited objects. Everything diffuses beyond its borders (…).” These childhood experiences laid the foundations for Natalia’s future artistic preoccupations. 

Natalia studied fine art, painted, but from the very beginning also created three- dimensional objects, which in time acquired an increasingly significant role in her creative work. Eventually performance entered the scene.  Her subsequent studies in textile conservation were partly motivated by practical considerations, yet the skills gained there helped to broaden the spectrum of her artistic activities. One by one, objects were called back into existence, rendered with immense precision while being subjected to transformations of their original function, crafted with great respect and profound exploration of their materials and context. Thus „resurrected” they received a new poetic and surreal form of life. Each of these objects carries within it a story stemming from the juxtaposition of its origin and its new identity, endowed upon it by the artist. Matters which usually seem to belong to different worlds encounter each other here. As we look at these objects we experience astonishment, suddenly gaining a different perspective, a different point of view. Sometimes brutally thrown off the beaten track, we allow ourselves to be carried away, somewhere else entirely. A shoe, a glove, women’s lingerie, cosmetics, a powder box, a napkin, a teacup or a glass—these often broken, chipped, reclaimed objects—thrown together in unexpected ways yet connected to one another, gain new meaning, making us aware of the transience and fragility of life. Yet there is no lack of humour in all of this. Plastic bags ‘embellished’ with painstakingly crafted, antique lace—the disposable and the once-valuable joined together—confound and defy conventional thinking. Traditional classification systems have no place here. This is legitimization of the dismissed and discarded; the refinement and respect for what is seemingly worthless. And above that all, poetry invariably hovers.