Ania Perkowska

Growing up as a child in communist Poland, my everyday life was underpinned and surrounded by stark, grey concrete structures – brutal, imposing, but unavoidable. This architecture was raw, substantial and woven into the history and fabric of the country and my upbringing. My work finds its foundations in that world, drawing from the same rawness but seeking beauty in form and function.

With a head full of ideas informed by these silent reminders of a different life and another era, I took up ceramics. I found myself experimenting with various materials and techniques, but in the end circling back to working with shape and texture rather than with colour. Over time I decided to consciously restrict the choice of materials, focusing on digging deeper rather than wider. I reached a point where I decided to dispense with colour altogether and make mostly monochrome work.

I mainly work in stoneware, using clay with varying degrees of roughness. I either burnish the surface using stones and lightbulbs, or quite the opposite, scrape it with metal ribs to expose the texture. My goal is to express those formative, dynamic relationships between opposites and translate them through my work, using minimum decoration and allowing texture to take the lead. My work is tactile – to understand it, it must be touched as well as seen. It is an aesthetic born of opposites, where darkness meets light, rough meets smooth and drabness conceals drama. A quiet elegance.