Rafał Zajko

Talk Art

Russell Tovey and Robert Diament c/o Independent Talent

Sculpture, Unknown, Russell Tovey, Painting, Drawing, Art, Artist Interview, Arts, Studio Visit, Visual Arts, Art Talk, Contemporary Art, Entertainment, Celebrity, Modern Art, Artwork, Talk Art, Robert Diament

4.6 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 5 October 2023

⏱️ 58 minutes

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Summary

We meet artist Rafał Zajko (b.1988, Białystok, Poland). Zajko’s work deals with issues around the industrial past, exploring its environmental impact in relation to working class heritage and queer identities. His sculptural practice incorporates diverse materials and processes including ceramics, ventilation systems, prosthetics and performance as a means to examine folklore, science fiction and queer technoscience, placing an emphasis on the industrial materials and processes that resonate with his heritage.

Zajko is currently working on a public commission with Wysing Arts Centre and St. Peters School in Cambridge, performance commission ‘Techno Harvest’ for Deptford X festival and a new sculptural commission for Kunsthalle Vienna in autumn 2023.

He studied for an an MFA in Fine Art at Goldsmiths, University of London and a BA (Hons) in Fine Art from Chelsea College of Art, London, UK. Recent solo exhibitions include ‘Amber Waves II’, Galeria Fran Reus, Palma, Mallorca, SP (2022), ‘Song to the Siren', Cooke Latham Gallery, London, UK (2022), ‘Amber Waves’, Public Gallery, London, UK (2021), ‘Resuscitation’, Castor Projects, London, UK (2020), ‘We Were Here/My Tu Bylismy’, Galeria Im. Slendzinskich, Białystok, PL (2019) and ‘Unputdownable’, White Cubicle, London, UK (2018).

Selected group exhibitions include ‘Support Structures’, Gathering, London (2023), ‘Swiat nie wierzy lzom’, Galeria Arsenal, Białystok, Poland (2022), ‘London Open 2022’, Whitechapel Gallery, London Uk (2022), ‘New Contemporaries 2021’, South London Gallery, London, UK (2021), ‘26 Degrees East’, Wiels Annex, Brussels, Belgium (2020), ‘Age of Ephemerality’, X Museum, Beijing, CN (2020), 'Clay TM’, TJ Boulting, London, UK (2020) and ‘Bold Tendencies 2020’, London, UK (2020). In 2020 Zajko was the recipient of the Bow Graduation Studio Award.

Visit: RAFAŁ ZAJKO CLOCKING OFF open now and runs until 26th November 2023: https://queercircle.org/rafal/

Nearest tube: North Greenwich. Free entry.

Follow @Rafal_Zajko and @QueerCircle

Rafal's website is: https://www.rafal-zajko.com/

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Good afternoon. Good morning. Good evening. Wherever you are in the world, I am Russell Toby.
0:07.6	And I'm Robert Diamond. And this is Talk Art. Welcome to Talk Art. How are you today, Robert? How
0:12.9	are you? Today, Russell, I am feeling like Frankenstein. Like the monster that is Frankenstein.
0:22.0	And it's a kind of indirect but connected reference because when I first met today's guest,
0:27.2	it was back in those pre-pandemic days. It was literally about two months before the pandemic began.
0:32.5	And he had emailed me as a then student at Goldsmiths. And he was about to graduate and do his
0:38.4	master's show. And he asked me to go in and do tutorials. And I think the teaching group there
0:44.4	had said that the artist could actually select who they wanted to visit. And I think it was the
0:48.5	early days of Talk Art. And today's guests have been listening and been very supportive. So I went
0:52.7	in and I met a number of artists, including another guest lecturer that day who was Lindsay Mendesk.
0:57.6	And today's guest is actually the person we've realised who hooked me up with Lindsay Mendesk
1:02.4	and changed my life on that level. The work when I first met today's guest was all about
1:07.6	resuscitation and really breath. And not just the breath of the artist because the artist does
1:12.9	amazing performances and as well as making sculptures and installations. Back then, particularly,
1:18.2	he was doing these performances with breath and like breathing life into the sculptures. And also
1:23.9	the visitors were encouraged to breathe as part of the work. And I was really obsessed with that
1:28.4	idea at the time. This idea of material being our own breath, you know, within our lungs and how
1:34.1	that somehow and our art material, I'd never thought about it that much. And at the time, it made me
1:39.2	think a bit about Matthew Barney and Erika Mori. And the renumerous artist that I sort of even
1:44.9	might Kelly maybe, they were kind of artists who created these worlds and often had very particular
1:50.0	framing and installation methods that I felt this guest had really specifically sort of found his
1:56.7	own language. And growing up in kind of post-communist Poland, that was also a really big influence on
	...

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