Interviews with Artists
Kamil Duda
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Interview by Chris Alton
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Published in September 2026
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I stand on the balcony that overlooks the entrance hall of Manchester Art Gallery as a young man fumbles with sheets of newspaper, a bike pump, and some kind of improvised air cannon. Picking up a paint roller, he begins to apply adhesive to a large canvas, which stands awkwardly in the centre of the room. Gallery staff cast apprehensive glances at him and call over the evening's organiser. He takes aim with the air cannon and fires a cloud of tobacco, shredded newspaper, and wood chips. They stick to the canvas; amidst the noise I see a crude face. This was my first encounter with the work of Kamil Duda, an artist whose gestures make institutions uneasy.
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Kamil, I’ve had the opportunity to see your work in person on several occasions. Your practice is broad and moves seamlessly between sculpture, video, happenings, and more. Where does your work stem from? What are you drawn to? How do you choose your subject matter?
My practice is one of care and radical critique, grounded in responsibility. There isn’t much relation between the different subject matter I choose; it's rather guided by perhaps a form of compulsion. Through reading and talking and living, I stumble upon imbalances and conversations where I feel I have something to add, or an idea on how to handle or fix a situation within an abstract capacity. I am enacting a role of the ‘spectre’ - a role I have theorised the artist could embody. Being a Polish immigrant in Salford, it's easy to imagine yourself as a pale, ghostly visitor; only here temporarily to make things strange and proper.
Kamil Duda loading the air cannon during SERVER CLOUD, OZONE SHARP, 2026. Image by Daniel Crompton.
Could you tell me more about SERVER CLOUD, OZONE SHARP (2026) [described in the introduction], in which you shot a canvas with debris. Where did that idea stem from, why did you do it?
Inflicting a sense of panic often translates to a sense of urgency; to feel a perpetual risk right up until all the dust settles, and everyone is ok. Where the most innocuous-seeming substances become gunpowder. Information newspapers, when shredded, become an overwhelming lack of information, the familiar and rational fear of tobacco becomes irrational when all is stuck to a canvas and becomes image. I’m not sure what I was really getting at. Algorithms slowly seeping into everything we do; this was, in a sense, an imitation of a computer distributing content(s), in far removed, analogue fashion. Firing a request into a large server cloud of big nothing, nothing we can truly make sense of, felt like my most immediate and adequate response at the time. The Manchester Art Gallery is also quite a lethargic building; not much changes, so I suppose to do something quick was a reaction to that too. Tempo is a tool; in this case, it outpaces the institution's etiquette of deliberation and safety.
Kamil Duda with The Art of a Subtle Goodbye, 2026. Image by Edie Crompton.
I imagine you had to get permission to shoot at the canvas in Manchester Art Gallery, what was that process like? You've made a number of works that seem to push against what is acceptable, the rules, institutional expectations. Where does that impulse come from, is it generative to have something to push against?
The Manchester Art Gallery takeover events are organised by Paulo from the Black Wall Art Collective, who works at the Gallery. So I burden him with my ideas, and he is the one who convinces the rest of the gallery that they can trust me. Poland, as a people are quite pragmatic, sceptical of systems and institutions; I think that has been a key influence during childhood: not to take them too seriously. As a child, my church etiquette was all wrong; had me swinging off the balcony trying to put out the sanctuary lamp instead of getting ready for my first communion. So I suppose it's always been instinctual to second-guess the rules of a room as an expression of freedom or dissatisfaction. Translated into adulthood, that petulance becomes more of a political function. It's funny now reflecting on that translation. The hierarchies and models have not changed; today I am just focused on, let's say, more wittily circumventing structures of authority and social contracts. Art is one of the very few cultural environments where there is considerable forgiveness afforded to the artist, so it allows us to take on more radical and experimental means for critique and direct action. To critique and question the legitimacy of authority is a process of looking for and constructing the perfect wrong question for the room or situation, and therefore, yes, it's an artistically fruitful endeavour - as you say, pushing against.
Person reading the Delivery Note, part of The Art of a Subtle Goodbye, 2026. Image by Daniel Compton.
To continue with the theme of ‘pushing against’; a central work in your degree show was The Art of a Subtle Goodbye (2026), a truly enormous crate with two protruding tusks, and a delivery note. It addresses Manchester School of Art's discontinuation of materials bursaries, the introduction of 'Art School Commissions', and the school's wider priorities / the culture these create. Could you say more about this work and the reaction it garnered? (from peers, tutors, the institution, and/or wider audiences?)
The work was to function as a sort of farewell; a love letter, albeit one that resorts to the most absurd means. To love the school (or anything, for that matter) is to feel responsibility to fight for it, protect it and, in turn, critiquing it. Leisurely reading on anarchist writer Hakim Bey and his idea of ‘poetic terrorism ’, I stumbled upon the proposal to “gift an ageing circus elephant”. And so I took it and ran with it. A gesture so large felt like the correct ceremony for a bursary being led out the door so sneakily. The tutors were completely in support; in fact, without their perseverance, the delivery note would have never stayed up due to the school management's objections. Once it was up, though, it did what I'd hoped; it became a kind of open letter. Many students from various years reached out and expressed their frustration over the bursary discontinuation. £200 pounds a year covers one's paint and canvas, or another’s trip to the countryside to roll around in the mud (both valid and productive expenditures). Students are being stretched thin, and with the course expecting you to produce, to travel, to research, and to make mistakes, some just can't afford to. These sorts of decisions create cultural issues, where there are simply some students who don't feel the allure and magic of the art school the same way others do, and I think a lot of that is a class-related issue - something the school recognises but continually fails to act upon, and in recent times has arguably even gone backwards on.
A+B, 2024. Image by Wren Adobe.
I'm interested in the role that documentation plays in your practice. You've made a number of artworks that exist as short films on your Instagram. SERVER CLOUD, OZONE SHARP; LABOUR OF YESTERDAY/OBSOLETE (2026); and A+B (2024), the latter of which is described as 'a happening'. What's the relationship between the artwork and the documentation? Is documentation a means to an end, the work itself, or something else?
Well, it's complicated. Sometimes just an easy record so my nan can see what I'm up to, no shame in that. On the other hand, the relationship between sculpture, event and film possesses its own shifty temporal qualities which can be used as artistic devices in their own right. I immediately think of Deller's Battle of Ogreave. The film of the reenactment never feels like mere documentary but rather functions as a repeatable, mediated rupture. It resonates this freedom and anger of these northern blokes through your laptop screen; you yourself begin to feel anger, in a way that never gets old. Bringing that closer to home, with pieces like A+B, I want the film not just to record the situation by multiplying it, but to give the event a second, mediated life that runs alongside the original, rather than simply following it.
What does your nan think of the things you get up to? I have a lot of fond memories of my own Grandma laying out big sheets of paper for me to paint on, she's still a big supporter!
To be completely honest, she reckons I've gone completely off the rails. I was a decent student of physics and many other sciences; she often reminisces longingly of those days. I too have fond memories of my grandma enabling my creative spirit as a young kid, but she had probably hoped I would grow into more of an employable character. I find it funny and don't blame her at all; she grew up in a completely different world to me. I am in much more of a privileged position to pursue and engage with the arts. She obviously only wants the best for me, and I love my nan.
PROSPERITY IN SIGHT...! (Detail), 2025I'm particularly taken with the artworks in which you – to varying degrees – relinquish control and invite chance, ephemerality, and/or entropy in. I'm thinking of works like; Prosperity in Sight (2025), a text that runs through a treadmill and becomes more distorted with each circuit; and A+B in which you wheel a two-headed rocking horse around Manchester, gathering responses from the public as you go; and your paintings made with unfixed charcoal. Why do you relinquish control or otherwise invite outside influence so readily?
Outside influence can become feedback. The rocking horse collects data: the tactility, the weather of the city and in turn embodies it through its deterioration. The paper and charcoal become an abstracted, alternative mapping of a treadmill's design and inner workings. It’s not something to always employ, but some works it only makes sense for time and chance to be invited as a medium.
Yeah, very few of your works are static. They’re events that unfold, whether slowly or suddenly. I’m really interested in this accumulation of what you call ‘feedback’, it’s a fitting term for a broad range of things. Are your works only ‘finished’ when they've accrued enough feedback, are they ever finished?
I like to feel that, as a person, I am always encouraging the process of becoming, and I hope that translates into my practice too. Both my practice and my works are always growing or falling apart into something new, and I feel very comfortable and happy with that. To be static tends to mean to preserve. I don't think my job is to make things that need preserving. It seems very unproductive and futile, for me, to create more stagnant remains; it's just not what I do best. If your practice is referential, tackling contexts forever in flux, then the work will keep on unfolding in directions you cannot control. But I guess the work is at one point finished when it becomes relevant enough to my intentions and the situation I am responding to, if that makes sense? And when it reaches that point, there is also the process and aftermath of the work losing that relevancy, its potency, and turning into something more like an artefact.
Olive Tree, 2026Finally, is there anything else that you'd like to share; do you have plans post-graduation?
For the next two months or so, I am taking up a volunteering role as Residency Coordinator & Studio Assistant at Joya: arte + ecología / AiR in Southern Spain. So whilst I plan to continue my personal practice, responding to, and backdropped by the landscapes of the High Sierras, I am really looking forward to contributing towards and helping organise an artist programme that truly compares to no other. I will be mostly involved in the restoration of an ancient water catchment system, directing my practical skills towards an environment built around ecological independence. I really urge everyone to do some research about this residency project; I think it's bloody brilliant. I also have a residency coming up in Germany in November; I hope that will be a very productive and exciting month for my practice. I tend to stretch lines of research to the brink of exhaustion. It is important for me to periodically draw lines under everything and start again. Volunteering away and a residency far from Salford feel like the perfect opportunities to do so.
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Kamil Duda is a Polish-born multidisciplinary artist raised and based in Salford, UK. He graduated with a BA in Fine Art from Manchester School of Art in 2026. Recent exhibitions include; Happening Again in a Slow Diagonal, Bankley Gallery (2026), Peripheries, 1853 STUDIOS (2026), Raise the Volume, Manchester Art Gallery (2026). Recent awards include; MAFA Graduate Award (2026), Warrington Museum & Art Gallery Emerging Artist Award (2024).
kamil-duda.com
︎ @kamildudaart
Chris Alton is an artist living and working in West Yorkshire, UK. He was part of Syllabus III, an alternative learning programme (2017-18). Exhibitions & commissions include; Grief Must be Love With Nowhere to Go, Warrington Museum & Art Gallery (2026) and Bloc Projects (2024); Exeter Contemporary Open, Exeter Phoenix (2025) Tied to Everything Else, Paradise Works, Salford (2023); Survey, BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art; Bluecoat, Liverpool; g39, Cardif; & Jerwood Space, London (2018-19); Bloomberg New Contemporaries, South London Gallery; & Liverpool Biennial (2018-19). Awards include; Exeter Contemporary Award Winner 2025 (jointly awarded), The 6th John Ruskin Prize 2024 (Shortlisted), a-n Artist Bursary 2022, Jerwood Bursary 2020.
chrisalton.com
︎ @chrisalton
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