The work explores landscapes undergoing transformation through the mining industry in Yorkshire, bringing together questions of extraction, labour and memory. A new series of sculptures engages with the region’s socio-political histories, including the miners’ strikes of the 1970s and 1980s, and the material and social transformations they have left behind. The mine is approached as a layered and contested terrain, where industrial processes intersect with histories of labour, political struggle and collective memory. Material, historical and affective dimensions overlap, tracing the ways in which extraction continues to shape both the landscape and the histories embedded within it.
Image in reference, Notes on the Underground, Vasilis Papageorgiou, 2026
Vasilis Papageorgiou (b. 1991) lives and works in Athens. He is currently developing a solo exhibition for Leeds Arts University Gallery as part of Yorkshire Sculpture International, forthcoming in 2027. In 2026, he will be in residence at Gasworks, London. In 2024, he presented a large-scale solo exhibition at the Salzburger Kunstverein in Austria. In 2023, he was a resident at LUMA Arles with the support of ARTWORKS and, in 2022, he was awarded the Matteo Viglietta Award in Turin, Italy. In 2018, he was awarded the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Artist Fellowship by ARTWORKS, and in 2026 he was selected as an ARTWORKS Grantee. His work is held in various collections, including the Onassis Foundation Collection and the La Gaia Collection. He is the co-founder of Enterprise Projects, an independent project space operating periodically in Athens since September 2015.