Aleksandra Zawada graduated from Drawing and Painting at Edinburgh College of Art in 2011. She works across painting, photography and ceramic sculpture. She lives and works in Edinburgh.
Aleksandra has been working in ceramic sculpture since 2018. Her works are executed with economy; they are modest in scale, with few, sparse details. Her minimal, not overworked forms are deliberate and playful. Aleksandra’s pieces are hand-built mainly from raku clay, and hand-painted using oxides and glazes. She often uses glazes that reference historical works seen in museum collections in Japan and China, and those resembling the finish of ancient bronze sculptures. Her works are figurative and totemic, with a distinctive sense of style and often humour. The works on display were developed with support from the 2022 VACMA Edinburgh Award in Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop’s Eduardo Paolozzi Project Space.
Aleksandra’s paintings are inseparable from drawing: they are ephemeral and tactile - to the point of looking casually scribbled. They are flat, immediate, and are made directly on canvas without preparatory drawings. She usually works in series. The works on display are typical of Aleksandra’s practice: drawing and painting interweave and ‘motive’ is carried from one work to another in a sequence.
