Kasia Töns’ practice is shaped by myth, movement, and visceral encounter, often beginning with an inefficiency or gesture that becomes a ritual.
We spoke to her about her current exhibition, ‘The Mage’ at MARS Gallery, reflecting on obsession, malleability, and embracing hand-made processes in an age of acceleration.
Cover Image: Tom MacCammon
__
What inspired you to pursue a career in art, and how has your journey as an artist evolved over the years?
Like a lot of my peers who have sustained lengthy arts practices, it’s not about pursuing a career but about pursuing an obsession. To expect art to be a career might not be so sustainable. With all the rejection and low income living, these things may be too much of a struggle unless art making is a compulsion you can’t live without. My journey as an artist has always been one of play, intuition, endurance and ultimately my tool for understanding the world around me. I use very simple techniques not dissimilar to my early projects, but what has shifted is my methodology. While I used to make very personal works, I have become a lot more research based, this has expanded my practice, in scope and allowed for engagement with wider audiences.
Image: Caterpillar, 2025
In your current exhibition, you explore transformation through endurance and self-imposed rituals. Can you speak to how these themes connect with your own creative process?
Every project I do involves some sort of literal self-transformation. I get so invested and entwined with my subject matter that I think I need to become what I’m researching. At the completion of past projects some of the identities I thought I needed to transition into have been – a traditional broom maker, gardener, herbalist, bushwalking adventure guide, designer for disaster zones. It’s happened so many times that I recognise it both as part of the process and my personality, but it doesn’t prevent me from currently planning to undertake survival skills training and spend the rest of my days walking like the women I’ve recently been researching. Having this malleability is a help and a hinderance, it allows me to go deep into projects but also creates a rawness to work through when it is over and I realise I am me again and will always be an artist.
Image: Despite the Storm, Because of the Storm, 2025
Much of your practice involves following natural forces—like tides, weather, or instinct. How do these experiences outside the studio influence the way you construct your textile works?
Everything I do begins with a lot of uncertainty, a composition is never fixed from the start, my works are active research aides, journals, paths to understand and connect many, seemingly disparate ideas. My process is as inefficient as following a tide or a river but that’s fine with me. I like to take my time and hand stitched textiles can’t be rushed even if you’d like to try. The pace of pushing a needle into a piece of fabric and pulling it back out again and again travels at the sort of pace that is probably natural for us, slow gratification that you must really toil over rather than instant but fleeting rewards.
Image: Sigil Magic Mask 1, 2025
What kind of experience do you hope to create for the viewer through your exhibition?
I hope to give the viewer a similar experience to what I feel when looking at the work of other textile artists. The materiality of textiles is like entering a rabbit hole, the closer you look, the more is revealed. Stitches as markings of time, symbols to decode, And discovering marks of underdrawings that haven’t been erased or covered over as a peek into the planning and process of the maker. In an age where we can outsource creativity to an AI bot, to stand in front of something that is unmistakably made by hand, mistakes and all is something special.
Image: Calling Out, Calling In, 2025
Where do you hope to see yourself, your practice, in 10 years?
Working from a transportable studio and collaborating with inspiring people on cross disciplinary projects. (and getting paid well to do so, I’ll be 50 by then so some financial stability would be very nice).
Töns’ exhibition continues at MARS Gallery until 8 November.
