Shiraz Sadikeen will head to London in October as the newest Gasworks artist in residence.

Gasworks hosts sixteen residencies each year, one of which has, since 2016, been extended to a New Zealand-based, early to mid-career artist to undertake self-led professional development, artistic exchange and experimentation and development of new international networks. Alongside the time for extensive practice-based research and access to artists in London with similar interests, Gasworks provides opportunities for the artist to develop new work and showcase their practice, work ethic and conceptual focuses to an international audience, including curators and collectors, unavailable in Aotearoa New Zealand.

The residency provides return flights to London, 24/7-access to a private studio space in the Gasworks building, accommodation in a house shared with three or four other international artists in residence with Gasworks, plus living and materials allowance. The critical nature at the heart of Gasworks encourages the fostering of active dialogues with local creative practitioners, including artists, curators and writers, as well as direct engagement with important London-based artist-run spaces, collectives, galleries, museums, patrons and collectors.

The three-month, fully funded residency will take place from October to December 2024 and is made possible through the very generous support of the Jan Warburton Charitable Trust, private individuals who contribute to NZ Friends of Gasworks, Emma Lewisham and the British Council Aotearoa New Zealand and the Pacific.

Shiraz Sadikeen (b. 1989) lives and works in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland. He makes paintings and sculptures that mediate their own conditions of production and reception. Often made using ready-made or found materials, as well as various processes of abstraction and formal displacement, Shiraz’s work explores the associations between these objects and the situations from which they originally derive. During his residency at Gasworks, his research will centre on the linked political economies and potentials for social democracy in the United Kingdom and New Zealand, as they are shaped by the evolving and residual patterns of Empire.