Agnes Kozuchowska

Agnes Kozuchowska is a Polish-born visual artist who lives and works in London. She works in various media, such as: drawing, painting, print, illustration, textiles and ceramic sculptures.

Prior to joining the MA in Ceramics and Glass at the Royal College of Art as a Charlotte Fraser Scholar, she graduated with honours from the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, and has taught Japanese woodcut for several years.

She has illustrated several books, including ‘Adela’s Summer’ (2017) and the recently published collection ‘Poems for Your Daughter’ (2023), both by Agnieszka Wolny-Hamkało. Her work has been exhibited in Poland, Germany, the United Kingdom, Taiwan and Japan.

She has been awarded in a number of competitions, including the iJungle Illustration Awards and the See&Say portfolio review, and received the ‘Young Poland’ (Młoda Polska) Scholarship from the Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage (2023).

I draw inspiration from two sources. The first are my personal experiences, sometimes quite ordinary and cheerful, sometimes much less so. The second source I love to refer to in my art are old tales, myths and legends. I am usually inspired by the primary versions of well-known fairy tales, but sometimes I also use those completely unknown and long forgotten. These stories, often full of cruelty, weirdness or absurdity, have long stimulated my creative work. I filter them through my imagination, I play with them, I juxtapose the real world with the unreal, and often find similarities between the two. Every time I meet a fairy-tale monster on my way, I just cannot resist drawing or sculpting it.

In any medium I practice, everything starts with a drawing, a quick sketch or even just a couple of lines. I subsequently transfer my sketches into ceramic sculptures that are entirely hand sculpted. Expression and colour are the fundamental ingredients of my artistic language. By playing with glazes, taming their complex and often capricious nature, I attempted to achieve painterly effects, and treat clay as a canvas, both in two- and three-dimensional works.