Quality of everyday life

f O y lit life a u q yday ever

de Gui

f O y t i e l f a i l u q yday ever N TiO i B i eXH

The fast paced world we live in creates in us the expectation of frequent experiences and constant excitement but in the grand scale of things majority of our lives are composed of days, which are very similar to each other. Quality of everyday life focuses on those aspects of day-to-day life, which aren’t commonly glamorised or even recognised as valuable in today’s world and yet are invaluable to the positive experience of life. The PCAG is proud to exhibit artists on various stages of their art practice working in all media, who explore the commonly unappreciated value of the ordinary day.

PCaG The Polish Contemporary Art Group is a newly established platform dedicated to promoting and exhibiting works by Polish contemporary artists.

The PCAG is a non-profit, private initiative that aims at presenting thought-provoking mixed-media art to the Scottish as well as international public. It is also devoted to creating a common ground for artists to develop international networking and business opportunities with other like-minded people and institutions. The Polish Contemporary Art Group believes that art should be accessible to everyone, therefore we would like to promote understanding of modern art in an environment that is always welcoming, inspiring and informative.

Iga Bożyk & Patrycja Godula Curators

Na WSka N a jO HaNO CieC Joanna is a graduate of Academy of Fine Arts, Poland 1978. She worked as a graphic designer and illustrator for several prestigious companies and at the same time took part in various fine art exhibitions. She lectured at Bucks University College and taught art at Ashton House School in Isleworth. She is a member of The Association of Polish Artists (APA) and, for the last two years the director of POSK Gallery in Polish Social & Cultural Association, London.

Her works are amongst many private collections in the USA, Italy, France, Poland, Hong Kong and the United Kingdom. After years spent living and working in Middle East, Africa and Far East, she is now based in London. ‘What interests me is an image in disguise’

Joanna works predominantly in oils and pastels, sometimes using collage and cut outs from photographs, either her own or belonging to others.

The starting point is often an idea provoked by situation that causes controversy, an argument that creates two opposite points of view. She tries to transform this imbalance into visual image that provokes similar reaction in a viewer without taking either side of an argument, but rather bringing the two sides as close to each other as possible, in a visual sense. This translates as an attempt to blur the border between the real and abstract, trying to create an image that is neither happy nor threatening but one that causes the viewer to feel unsure what one is looking at. The images used are often accidental and on the opposite spectrum. It is their proximity when they are brought together that she tries to use to create tension, restlessness and therefore provoke even more dispute about the original argument. Sometimes, though it is only a surface excitement of putting paint on paper or canvas, but still engaging the viewer to have a second look, hopefully discovering a part of a painting one hasn’t noticed at first.

The painting presented at the exhibition is titled Kitchen God. It is a reflection on the habit of drinking tea in different nations and cultures and an invisible power of the simple water-boiling vessel. The Russian samovar, the Arabic water kettle for coffee, a Chinese tea ceremony with its boiling pot of water all command attention of people gathered around them. A simple kettle becomes a Kitchen God. j.ciechanowska@btinternet.com joanna-ciechanowska.com

a aNN WiŃSka CZer Anna was born in 1984 in Dzierżoniów, Poland. She graduated Art Education in Photography and a year later Curating in the Department of Painting and Sculpture from The Eugeniusz Gepperd Academy of Art and Design in Wrocław. Anna also studied photography at Edinburgh College of Art and The Culture and Social Animation College in Wrocław with specialisation in Theatre. She exhibited her works both in Scotland and Poland. She currently lives and works in Edinburgh.

Anna has been involved in many interdisciplinary projects related to the subject of human condition for the past two years. In her work she uses different techniques (printmaking, painting, drawing) but her main medium is photography.

Recently, she has been closely involved with an Eastern European folk singing group Davno.

Anna’s project Nie-Obecność (Non-Presence) is a series of sixteen 35mm transparency photographs of people close to her, captured in a moment when they are relaxed in their private spaces. The photographs were taken from behind so that the persons’ face wouldn’t become a sexualized object (as en face portraits often do) and the intimacy of being together with a friend could flourish. Attention wanders from the person to the interior and back and makes the viewer wonder about their stories. The rooms just like people are so very different from each other — messy, chaotic, structured, some of them full of children’s clothes.

Anna’s interactive project requires the viewer to personally change the images in order to become a witness of this very dream-like, intimate relationship between the artist and the people close to her. It also reminds us about a partly forgotten custom of going through a family album and sharing memories. czerwinska.a@gmail.com

yNa Z r a KaT OSZ DŁUG Katarzyna was born in 1985 near Lublin, Poland.

She graduated with a degree in Photography and Electronic Media at Gray’s School of Art in Aberdeen and Photography at Edinburgh College of Art. She took part in various exhibitions in Poland and Scotland. The artist currently lives and works in Edinburgh.

Katarzyna introduces a series of photographs titled Tales of fall. The project is a sentimental journey to a place where the dynamics of life are still determined by the seasons, where time is circular.

Mundane, necessary chores seem like part of a magical ritual of giving and receiving, of a neverending exchange between a land and a ‘land carer’. kattdlgsz@gmail.com fragmentarism.blogspot.co.uk

iCa S S e j Vy a e L DUN Jessica was born in 1988. She graduated with a degree in Fine Art at the University of Edinburgh and Edinburgh College of Art. The artist has taken part in many exhibitions, residencies and research projects around Europe and the UK and creates in various media. She currently lives and works in London.

Jessica believes that the quality of every day life is one’s commitment to their hobbies and past times. In particular the skills that bring a sense of fulfilment and enjoyment with them.

She has been developing the idea of The Skill Exchange Library (SEL) as an artistic platform to archive and explore people’s skills and believes that we need to take more care in thinking about the skills that we have and how they can be shared with others.

Skills touched upon so far have been gathered from London, Edinburgh and Athens. The processes of skill sharing engendered by SEL are not only that of knowledge exchange and taking charge of what we know and how we learn, but also acts of sociability between people.

The SEL is also a facilitator of a human interaction between diverse groups of people, which together work out problems, guide, teach and find solutions.

In a world being lost to technology and gruelling work hours, these moments spent with others in non-professional environments are increasingly scarce and thus sacred.

Jessica contributes to the Quality of everyday life exhibition through a series of workshops that involve the Polish community with sharing skills that they learned prior to coming to Edinburgh or that harks back to their Polish heritage. During the actual workshops, members of the public will be invited to take part in the skill sharing. yantidunleavy@gmail.com www.yantidunleavy.com

ek r O i GąS DULa r i M a GO O r a j Cj y r T & Pa Jaromir was born in 1980 in Zielona Góra, Poland.

He graduated with a degree in Architecture at the Politechnika Wrocławska.

Jaromir has participated in and curated several exhibitions and mainly works in conceptual posters and geometrical photography. He currently works and lives in Edinburgh.

‘Art is a thought, the rest is craft’ Jaromir Gąsiorek Patrycja was born in 1982 in Lubin, Poland. She graduated with a degree in Graphic Arts and Animation at University of East London. In her artwork she explores the issues of loneliness, loss of a loved one and oppressive sexuality of today’s media. She took part in several group projects and exhibitions. This artist’s media of choice is print.

She works and lives in Edinburgh.

Jaromir and Patrycja met last year and started collaborating on various projects. This installation is their latest.

In today’s world the everyday is considered to be boring and not worth paying attention to and it is only the glamorous moments that are exciting and worth living for. Jaromir and Patrycja want to challenge that idea and show their point of view — that indeed, it is the everyday where the excitement lays. They want to draw attention to the importance of human interaction, intimacy, friendship and love. Every day is unique and absolutely impossible to recreate and therefore immensely important and worth cherishing.

The simple action of eating a meal together has been uplifted to a rank of an art form.

The golden spray paint used in the performance is symbolic on several levels — the colour of the paint signifies objects of value. The paint itself with its layers of coats and streaks not only dries but also ‘freezes’ the time. jarek@edinburgh.com.pl patricia.godula@hotmail.co.uk

Na y Z r kaTaOWSka jaCk Katarzyna was born in 1976 in Warsaw, Poland.

She graduated Art Education at University of Lublin in Poland and Professional Photography at Abertay University, Dundee in 2013. She took part in various projects and collective exhibitions in London, Edinburgh, Paris, and Warsaw.

Inspired by the famous essay by Virginia Woolf, Katarzyna explores the private spaces created by women. The body of work consists of portraits of women taken in their rooms or widely understood ‘their places.’ She explains that her project, A room of One’s Own has become a metaphor for speaking one’s mind and becoming oneself. Through working on this project, she also wanted to remember about the cultural references when exploring the issues of gender identity.

Katarzyna outlines that the room one lives in may become a shelter or even an entire world for one.

The room demonstrates our ideas about safety, comfort, often reflects personal taste, and hobbies.

It can also be a place where we prepare to meet the world and where we rest after these meetings.

Life happens there.

The portraits of women and girls in their rooms were taken in Poland and Scotland and showcase females of different ages and nationalities. The sitters are caught in the ordinary moment in their everyday lives.

Katarzyna welcomes everybody to make their own observations, build up their own narratives and draw personal conclusions about private places of one’s own room. kasia_jackowska@yahoo.co.uk www.jackowskaphotography.com

Tek j O W Ła kUTy Wojtek was born in Poland in 1981. He uses photography as a communication and a capture tool, often relying on its more creative aspects to capture the phenomena of impermanence and randomness. Wojtek hopes to sustain an openminded approach and not limit himself to just one way of seeing things. He is an author of two books — Instant flight (2009) and Next door, a distant land (2012). He currently lives and works in Scotland.

The photographs included in the exhibition are a part of an ongoing project titled It is what it is.

‘The order of life is not pre-determined; we shape our future. Living in the present, in the now, we are responsible for what happens.

But there are parts of life that we can’t influence.

By moving in space, we are participating in random movements of the human mass. Stirring the air and pushing particles around, we are sending them on courses, colliding with particles stirred by others.

At times we are running too fast, leaving the present unnoticed. Yet this is the element that defines us — what happens now is the only real.

Quality of this experience pushes us forward, generating more randomness. It is its frequently ignored beauty that attracts me.’ wojtek@kutyla.com www.wojtekkutyla.com

LLe e H C Mi WSka ŁęTO Michelle was born in London in 1979, to a Polish mother and second-generation Irish father.

Following regular family visits to Poland; Michelle studied on exchange at the Jan Matejko Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków for three months, while at the Glasgow School of Art. She has also studied Philosophy and Politics at the University of York and most recently Drawing Practices at the Leith School of Art. Michelle has participated in several residencies both abroad and in the UK. She exhibited in Lisbon, Kraków, London, Hamburg, Edinburgh, and Glasgow. She also has written for numerous publications. She now lives and creates in Glasgow.

Michelle works with a variety of media, exploring the limitations and possibilities of socially constructed space and relationships.

The paintings presented at the exhibition explore the qualities of everyday life in relation to the built environment, how the big ideas of urban designers, architects, planners and other professionals manifest themselves in our cities and homes. They also examine how these ideas affect our daily lives and everyday habits — what we experience on our walk to work, when looking at the view from our bedroom window or lying on our backs in a local park. micaletowska@googlemail.com gis.uk.com/artists.php/140/michelle+letowska

Or B i C Ś ki S Ń i LiP Ścibor was born in 1978 in Warsaw, Poland. In 2005 he graduated with a degree in Tourism and Recreation from Academy of Physical Education in Warsaw. Ścibor also studied Black and White Photography at Stevenson College and Black and White Portraits at Telford College in Edinburgh. He is passionate about street, portrait and landscape photography in which he has been involved for the past 20 years.

Ścibor’s project presented at the Quality of everyday life exhibition encourages participants to take a mental journey to people and places in the world explored by few. In order to achieve this, he prepared an installation where a viewer can take a rest on a park bench randomly left in one of the gallery’s rooms, relax and find an album left by a stranger in mysterious circumstances. The visitor opens the album and the story begins. The participant’s imagination wanders to a distant world where its inhabitants’ quality of everyday life differs from the one we all share in the western civilization. sciborlee@gmail.com

Ska W a N O N r jOa Ta-OST i MaL Joanna was born in 1983 in Rzeszów, Poland.

She graduated with a degree in Multimedia Communication at the Academy of Fine Arts in Poznań and Artistic Craft at The Folk University in Wzdów. She is a laureate of numerous photo competitions and a participant of both individual and collective exhibitions in Poland. Since 2005 she collaborates with her husband, Piotr. Their common projects merge conceptual school of photography from Poznań and documentary approach of Łódź Cinematography School. She currently lives and works in Edinburgh.

Joanna’s Eight Women project consists of seven portrait photographs of eight women from four generations of her family. The main theme of the artist’s work revolves around the bonds between the female members. Throughout many generations those ties have been exceptionally strong, so strong in fact that they last even after death.

‘Women who died, our grandmothers and mothers are still present in our lives; they speak to us and take care of us. My mother told my sister one morning that the grandmother appeared in her dream. She came with an infant in her arms and said that they needed to talk about it. My sister went pale because she just came to inform my mother that she was expecting a baby’. Joanna claims that there are more such stories, but they go unnoticed now, as they have become a common part of their everyday lives.

There is also a belief in Joanna’s family that when someone dies another family member is coming to take their place. After the artist’s father’s death her son was born and after her grandmother died her sister gave birth to a daughter.

For Joanna the quality of everyday life is not the things that we own, nor the money we have but the people around us, the relationships we have and the bonds we create. joannamo83@gmail.com mostudio.eu

r PiOTTa i MaL Piotr was born in 1981 in Rzeszów, Poland. He graduated with a degree in Audiovisual Studies: Film, TV and Still Photography at the Leon Schiller Higher School of Film, TV and Theatre in Łódź in 2006. He is a winner of several photo competitions and has also participated in individual and collective exhibitions. Since 2005 Piotr collaborates with his wife, Joanna. Their common projects merge conceptual school of photography from Poznań and documentary approach of Łódź Cinematography School. He currently lives and works in Edinburgh.

The Home Town project is a personal record of places important to the artist. Piotr perceives those places as the witnesses of everyday life and history that happens here and now.

‘We walk down the streets every day, we chase after money and career. We have no time to stop and look around. We forget how to find beauty and magic in a single, unexpected moment.’

In order to fully express the artist’s vision of the Home Town and Quality of everyday life projects, the photographer uses an old medium-format camera to take extremely original images on film that has been expired for over 20 years. piotr.malita@gmail.com mostudio.eu

Ej BŁaz Zak C Mar Błażej was born in 1983 in Poland. He recently graduated Professional Photography from Stevenson College under The University of Abertay, Dundee. His greatest emphasis is on portraiture and social landscapes. His style is characterised by a distinctive blend of documentary and fine art photography aesthetics. Since his graduation in 2012, Błażej has participated in various projects and collective exhibitions. He now lives in Aberdeen.

At the Quality of everyday life exhibition Błażej introduces his ongoing long-term project The Neighbours. He uses a medium of photography to create a portrait of contemporary and multicultural Scottish society and through it he conveys his beliefs that in today’s well connected world anyone, regardless of the nationality, cultural and religious background can be our neighbour. Historical and modern factors had big influence on how our society looks today; therefore it is important to have a record of the current processes and also to remember the past events that shaped our world.

The artist points out that there are various reasons for migrations, ranging from political, economical to plain curiosity. By photographing and interviewing his sitters, Błażej is trying to show a part of their private environment in their new home in Scotland, and encourage the viewers to draw their own conclusions.

Błażej highlights that migrations and multicultural societies are not a new occurrence. He is researching on communities and individuals, who came to Scotland many years ago. Among them are Polish soldiers who stayed here after the Second World War or Jewish families, which settled down in Scotland in nineteen century or even earlier. The artist’s research proves that these examples are just a part of a much wider and interesting multicultural story of this Northern European nation.

Błażej believes that in today’s well-connected and fast paced world anyone could be our neighbour.

This aspect of everyday life is not celebrated enough though and many of us despite living in multicultural society are often living in a safe bubble of own communities interacting with different cultures only at work and public spaces and out of necessity. The artist desires to make people more open and curious about each other.

He also stresses the importance of celebrating and valuing multicultural aspects of Scottish society.

Getting to know our neighbours is one way of doing so and this may only result in improving quality of our everyday life.

One of his photographs, although taken outside The Neighbours project, writes itself elegantly into it as well as the theme of the exhibition. Autoportret in which he lays with his girlfriend Zuzana in bed, puts Błażej in a position of a sitter and a neighbour who allows the viewer into his world. info@bmarczak.com www.bmarczak.com

ŁaW S O RaD NiCki SŁOM Radosław was born in Częstochowa in 1978, Poland. He studied Foundation Photography at Stevenson College in Edinburgh and Portrait Photography at Edinburgh Telford College. The artist has participated in several exhibitions and taken photographs for a number of publications. He lives and works in Edinburgh.

Radosław’s style takes bits of different aspects of reality and balances them on the borderline of absurd. This is what he is trying to explore in his most recent work.

The majority of his photographs are black and white, as this allows capturing the light in an abstract way, to see the shadows and imagine their unreality. These photographs have been included in the exhibition.

‘My distance to the world and an absurdum that I feel defines my sense of humour and at times anti-humour. I observe ordinary life through this subtle filter to enrich my personal perception and to cause either a smile or a question. I’m trying to avoid any obviousness and association, but provoke contemplation instead. Sometimes I just enjoy aesthetic formalism to see things, as they not really are.

At the end of the day, I would describe my photographs as random side effects of my life-long experience of the world so far, which is a neverending project for me. I am a world observer in the first instance. Experiencing life as it is and isn’t.’ r.slomnicki@gmail.com radek.art.pl

e V i T C N a O r L e iNT iNG Sa T D i N r a W COTL iN S The quality of everyday life: A written word and photography project ‘Women walk through the fields under their umbrellas, A drunkard grows sleepy at the edge of a lawn, Vegetable peddlers shout in the street And a yellow-sailed boat comes nearer the island’ Czesław Miłosz A Song on the End of the World

Interaktywny Salon Piszących w Szkocji (Interactive Writing Salon in Scotland) is an informal group of Polish writers living in Scotland, the majority of who are based in Edinburgh. The founders of the group met in 2010, when they took part in a writing competition organised by the Polish Consulate General in Edinburgh. The meeting at the award ceremony resulted in the creation of a virtual space for all those keen on writing, whether poets or non-fiction writers, journalists or novelists.

Over the years they have become a dynamic and supportive community of writers who love both the craft and critique. Since the very beginning their activities have included organising writing workshops, competitions and literary events, all to promote the Polish language and its rich literature among our fellow Poles and our British hosts. kkokowska@gmail.com salon.edinburgh.pl

aNia eWiCZ i STaS Ania Stasiewicz has been an unofficial Salon photographer since the summer of 2011. She was born 1977 in Wrocław, but soon after gaining a Masters in Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology she emigrated to the UK. ‘Ever since I can remember there was a camera at home: huge, brown and unavailable to me’, she says. Years later, after her move to the UK, she was passing by a second-hand shop and suddenly found herself buying a camera. That’s when the adventure with photography and ten years of documenting life miles away from her birthplace began.

She soon discovered that rather than photographing places that were gradually becoming less and less strange, and more and more hers, she preferred to photograph people; to the point of almost spying them. She is an amateur photographer, mostly publishing her works online, but has had work exhibited at one of Salon’s events — Literary Blizzard, at Edinburgh’s Ukrainian Club in December 2011. She is also a keen jewellery designer.

Ania joins forces with authors from Salon once again to work on this unique project, combining photography and the written word to promote the quality of everyday life. Seemingly trivial aspects of life are essential for a writer’s inspiration — clothes and cosmetics, books and bus stops, pets and the wildlife of a big city. In things we see and use every day you can find the philosophy of life and sometimes the answer to the eternal questions: What makes a moment special? What is life all about? Why are we here?

Some of the greatest Polish writers (Czesław Miłosz, Wisława Szymborska, Miron Białoszewski, Marek Hłasko, Bruno Schulz, Paweł Huelle and Jacek Dehnel) have been fascinated and inspired by everyday life. Influenced by them, we have written poems and short stories that draw inspiration from the everyday. This is the first level of our project; Ania took it to the next with her skills and now presents the photographs inspired by our work, going back to basics to show everyday life through her camera lens.

e V i T C N a O r L e iNT iNG Sa T D i N r a W COTL iN S Six Salon authors are presenting the works, which serve as the basis for Ania’s photography.

ek i Mar BieWSk ę GOŁ

a kaSi WSka O kOk

Marek Gołębiewski born in 1974 in Iława. He left Poland 20 years ago and has been living in Edinburgh since 2006. He has been publishing poetry online since 2009.

Kasia Kokowska, born 1977 in Kielce. She is a journalist who moved to the UK in 2005. A manager at the University of Edinburgh and a co-ordinator of the Interactive Writing Salon project.

a kaSi OWSka k kULi

ia GOS ka PaTO

Kasia Kulikowska, born 1974 in Świecie. Mother of two teenagers, she moved to Scotland in 2006 and currently lives in Aberdeen. A writer of pure nonsense poetry and short prose, lyricist and occasional blogger.

Gosia Patoka, born 1981 in Warsaw. Vegan cat lover, Russian literature expert and mother of a one year old boy. She has been living in Edinburgh since 2005. She writes short prose and poetry.

rZ O G e GRZ SŁaW jarOk ryBa Grzegorz Jarosław Rybak, born 1977 in Olsztyn.

Poet, novelist and socialist who holds a Masters in Political Science. Resident in Edinburgh since 2005, he has been publishing works online since 2008.

iaN M a D ąTek i W Ś Damian Świątek, born 1980 in Iłża. A poet and a writer of satirical shorts who has been in Edinburgh since 2006. He has been publishing works online since 2010.

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There are a few people we want to thank for their amazing work these past few months without which this exhibition wouldn’t be able to take place.

First and foremost we want like to thank Summerhall and especially Paul Robertson, who saw potential in our project and who gave us the opportunity to exhibit in such a prestigious place.

We want to thank all the participating artists and authors for contributing to this exciting and inspiring project.

A special thanks to Edinburgh.com.pl and Polish Edinburgh Group for their continuous support and advice.

And last but not least, we want to thank you all for coming to our exhibition.

For designing all the invitations, flyers, and every other type of promotional work, we would like to acknowledge our dear friend Dawid Nabiałek.

He has taken PCAG’s ideas and made them far better than we could have ever imagined.

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