Artist in Residence

Farouk Alao aka Farouk858  is a Nigerian-Irish multidisciplinary artist and designer based in London. A self-proclaimed creative crackhead, he needs to create to survive. His work spans digital media, installation and painting, exploring emotional connections with technology through a culturally rooted lens.

He has created for the Tate, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Guinness, The Living Canvas and London’s Outernet. Farouk is also the founder of 858, home to Studio858, 858 Art Club, 858Garms and 858 Watches. His practice invites curiosity, blending digital tools and human feeling to connect across cultures and disciplines. Farouk is pioneering a new technique he calls OMNAISSANCE, where he blends bleeding-edge contemporary technology with traditional techniques.

Farouk will be in residency September and October.

David Schmidt, known professionally as ‘DS,’ is a London-based urban artist began his street art journey in East London in 2002. In addition to his street art, DS has been commissioned by multinational companies and has sold his art in prestigious locations such as Harrods. Notably, he painted MG Motors’ first official art car.

He often explore themes of violence, fragility, and the juxtaposition of old and new. Over the years, the street pieces have evolved to feature a recurring motif of dysfunctional angels and cherubs, blending classical imagery with contemporary elements.

DS will be taking over our studio in November and December.

Parks Sadler is a London-based artist originally from North Carolina. He earned an MA in Contemporary Photography from Central Saint Martins in 2023.  Sadler’s practice revolves around the concept of the “active archive”, engaging with materials imbued with personal and collective histories. Through sculpture, photography, and printmaking, he creates works that investigate the processes of remembering and the unfolding of queer identity.

In April and March Dasha took over our studio.

An interdisciplinary artist born in Minsk, Belarus and rooted in London, she works predominantly across written and performed language, painting, and multisensory installation. Her work is playful and irreverent. Frequently employing her voice and somatic practices as well as intuitive mark-making, free association, and wordplay in order to break out of her own habits of perception, Dasha describes her work as a celebration of consciousness.

Zulfiya Spowart was born in 1991 in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. Having achieved a bachelor’s degree in mural arts, in her homeland, and then working on a wide variety of projects, the artist has created a successful career in this field. Currently, Zulfiya lives in London with her family and works at home in her small studio. She works with textiles, paintings, watercolours, wood and digital media.

In artistic practice, Zulfiya explores the subject of corporeality, central to which is a search for identity when the artist turns to her own biography and touches upon her experience of decolonisation, emigration and motherhood. The culture of her native land – Central Asia, mysticism and handicraft occupy a special place in Zulfiya’s practices.