From the studio in Wrocław (process); Credits/photographer: Kuba Celej / IAM

Alicja Patanowska creates an arresting art installation in the V&A Museum’s garden by transforming 2,000 unique ceramic pieces made from the waste of Europe’s largest copper mine into a profound reflection on environmental damage and material care.

An installation in the John Madejski Garden of the Victoria & Albert Museum in London offers visitors an encounter between clay, water, and reflection. In The Ripple Effect, Alicja Patanowska presents an uncannily beautiful reflection of the environmental waste caused by Poland’s most damaging copper mine.

The installation takes shape as a ceramic plateau of 2,000 unique ceramic pieces, each conceived and wheel-thrown by the artist’s hand, encircling a fountain that guides water into the garden’s central pond. Among these tiles, eight are coated with copper, marking the stark ratio of copper yield: only 0.4% is recovered from mining, with the rest discarded as waste.

All the material for The Ripple Effect was sourced from a single place: the Żelazny Most tailings reservoir in southwest Poland. This reservoir is the largest sump reservoir of froth (copper mining tailings) in Europe. Its construction in 1977 entailed the destruction of the villages of Barszów, Kalinówka, and Pielgrzymów. The water migrating from the dump is a potential source of contamination with substances like chlorides, sulphates, heavy metals (including Mercury), phenols, and cyanides used in the ore separation process.

The collected waste was first dried and cleaned of any mechanical impurities, then ground to achieve a particle size suitable for ceramic processing. It was then combined with ingredients for a stoneware clay base in varying proportions and tested through a series of firings to explore its aesthetic and structural potential. The composition that proved most successful consisted of approximately 70% clay and 30% reclaimed material.

In the exhibition at the V&A, this process is made visible to visitors: alongside the fountain installation is a series of samples showing different stages of material experimentation, displayed in a vitrine. This openness reveals the often-hidden layers of artistic research, inviting viewers to experience not only the final form but also the care, curiosity, and transformation embedded within it. Each piece is shaped and glazed by hand, creating subtle variations that ripple across the surface like water itself.

Patanowska’s work draws on material research and the embodied knowledge of direct contact with clay. She looks at the narratives contained in physical matter, with each piece shaped and glazed by hand, creating subtle variations that ripple across the surface like water itself. Visitors are invited to touch, sit, and reflect—to experience clay not only as matter, but as a medium of care.

About Alicja Patanowska

Alicja Patanowska is a Polish visual artist, designer and potter. A graduate of the Royal College of Art and the Academy of Art and Design in Wrocław, her practice blends art, design, and traditional ceramic craft with a strong focus on ecological and social issues. Patanowska is known for her research-driven ceramic installations that explore themes like sustainability, material transformation, and the environmental impact of resource extraction, often transforming waste materials into objects of both symbolic and functional value, as exemplified by her notable projects like Plantation and The Ripple Effect. Her works, which emphasise the embodied knowledge gained from direct contact with materials, have been exhibited internationally and are part of significant collections, including the Shanghai Museum of Glass and the National Museum in Kraków. Visit patanowska.com and follow @alicjapatanowska.

Tags

ceramics | circular economy | G41 | Poland