A Ripple Through Time: Ceramics then and now

Alicja Patanowska is coming to the Weston Library on Monday 26 October for A Ripple Through Time: Ceramics then and now, a conversation that pulls together art, archaeology, science and Polish ceramic heritage. It's a free, in-person event running from 14:00 to 16:00 in the Sir Victor Blank Lecture Theatre.

The talk takes Patanowska's installation The Ripple Effect as its starting point to look at making, materials, memory and the relationship between people and objects. Patanowska is a sculptor, visual artist, designer and potter from Poznań whose research-based practice in clay investigates touch, gesture, ecology and material transformation. She studied at the Royal College of Art in London and holds a PhD in Fine Arts from the Eugeniusz Geppert Academy of Art and Design in Wrocław. The Ripple Effect was commissioned for the V&A's John Madejski Garden, curated by Carrie Chan, and shown during London Design Festival 2025 as part of the UK/Poland Season 2025.

Joining her is Professor Lambros Malafouris, Professor of Cognitive and Anthropological Archaeology at the University of Oxford and Tutorial Fellow at Hertford College. He brings his Material Engagement Theory, which argues that cognition emerges through our reciprocal engagement with the material world. Dr Joanna Bagniewska moderates the conversation, so the two will be talking through their work rather than just giving separate presentations. It's an interdisciplinary pairing: a working artist and a cognitive archaeologist looking at the same thing — how we interact with the material world — from two very different angles.

It's free and in person, so you can just turn up. The talk runs from 14:00 to 16:00 on Monday 26 October at the Sir Victor Blank Lecture Theatre in the Weston Library, Oxford, OX1 3BG.