PALIMPSESTS

Małgorzata Dawidek

blackShed are very excited to be working with Małgorzata Dawidek on this solo exhibition, as part of Coastal Currents 2026

Opening Event - Saturday 10th October, 2:00-4:00pm

Exhibition on show between 10.10.26 until 14.11.26

Palimpsests is a body of work by Małgorzata Dawidek that emerged from her artistic residency at Hastings Museum & Art Gallery. Drawing on descriptions of the natural world in the writings of Marie de France (c. 1160–1215), regarded as the first British female author, the artist has created a photographic and drawing-based series that reconstructs the natural-cultural landscapes of England’s southern coast – places shaped simultaneously by natural processes and by human presence, memory, history and imagination.

 Moving away from traditional ways of illustrating stories, Dawidek focuses on documenting the realities of Marie’s period: both those described by the poet in Lais and Fables, and those preserved in material culture. In the course of her research, she collaborated with curators of medieval collections, studying artefacts held by Hastings Museum & Art Gallery, Bexhill Museum and Winchelsea Court Hall Museum.

Dawidek focuses on nature, which is a central protagonist in Dame Marie’s narratives. She draws on their embodied, animistic and fantastical vision of the world, as well as on the relationships they establish between human beings, the natural world and supernatural forces.

The series presented at blackShed Gallery comprises photographs, cartographic elements and finely detailed hand-drawn works. Aerial records of the contemporary shoreline meet the lines of medieval maps, reconstructions of signs attributed to witches, traces of pigment derived from local clays, fragments of flora, drawings of historical artefacts and depictions of the animal world in Marie’s narratives. By juxtaposing the patterns and forms of archival objects with contemporary documentation, Dawidek creates a multi-layered visual essay on the traces of the past along England’s southern coast – its nature, places, people, legends, rituals and corporealities – opening a dialogue between times and spaces.

This exhibition was organised with the support of:

Hastings Museum & Art Gallery

Adam Miciewicz Institute

ZAiKS

The Eaton Foundation