Vasilis Papageorgiou at Gasworks: In Conversation with Dr Marianna Tsionki

Join artist Vasilis Papageorgiou and curator Dr Marianna Tsionki for an evening conversation exploring Vasilis’s artistic practice. Together, they will discuss the work he is developing during his residency at Gasworks, London, and examine key themes in his forthcoming exhibition at Leeds Arts University (2027), which looks at the complex relationships between resource extraction, labour, and collective memory. 

Vasilis’ work explores the relationship between the human body, architecture and the landscape. Drawing upon fields such as design and ecology, he has used the sculptural language of coastal architecture to examine how tourism impacts both the environment and the human body. His work explores how the exhaustion of our planet’s resources parallels the physical and mental toll of contemporary life, or how people might learn to resist productivity, celebrate immobility, and reclaim solitude.

During his London residency at Gasworks (Sep-Dec 2026), Vasilis is developing new sculptures that expand upon his ongoing exploration of landscapes undergoing transformation, focusing on the mining industry in Yorkshire. Engaging with the region’s socio-political histories - including the miners’ strikes of the 1970s and 80s - the work will interrogate the entanglements of extraction, labour, and memory. The mine will be approached not merely as a site of industrial production, but as a layered and contested terrain, where material, historical, and affective dimensions overlap and converge.