About

Natalia Zagorska-Thomas is an artist whose work responds to issues of the contemporary world with wit, intelligence and immense sophistication.  Ana Maria Pacheco

About Natalia Zagorska-Thomas:

Natalia Zagorska-Thomas was born in Warsaw, Poland. She holds a BA in Fine art from Central St Martins School of Art and Design and an MA in Textile Conservation from Textile Conservation Centre, Southampton University. For the past three decades she has worked as a visual artist, theatre designer, textile conservator and curator. Her work has been exhibited in the UK, Australia, Germany, Cuba, Italy and Spain.

As a textile conservator she has worked freelance at various institutions including the Royal Academy, Victoria and Albert Museum, Museum of London, Wawel Royal Castle, Krakow, Museum of Islamic Art in Doha, Qatar, The National Trust, Zenzie Tinker Textile Conservation Ltd. and the Royal Collection. Her art practice is strongly informed by her experience of conservation and working within the museum sector.

"Because I usualy start with an existing, broken or discarded object I don’t necessarily always feel like a sole author of the final piece, more a pair of hands which help to bring about its emancipation from previous daily servitude. I like the tension between this organic, intuitive process akin to metamorphosis and my other life as an art conservator, which relies on hard, verifiable fact and where the ideal result would be to stop time and eliminate change. So I spend half my working life treating objects as forensic evidence of human civilisation and the other trying to  prove that they are as wholly unreliable as the humans themselves".

About Studio Ex Purgamento:

Natalia Zagorska-Thomas is the owner and curator of Studio ExPurgamento, a small independent gallery purpose built within a domestic setting in Camden Town, dedicated to showcasing work by international artists along with their British counterparts. She has particularily strong links to the Polish artistic community in London.