David Brazier is a Boorloo/Perth-based artist working across sculpture, installation, moving image and research-led practice. His work investigates labour as a systemic and relational condition, examining how bodies and materials are organised, constrained and made productive, and how they resist or exceed those structures.
Brazier holds a PhD from Curtin University and an MA from Goldsmiths, University of London. His doctoral research examined artistic labour as a mode of resistance within contemporary capitalism and provides a conceptual foundation for an ongoing practice concerned with autonomy, labour and systems of organisation.
Brazier previously worked collaboratively with Kelda Free as Brazier & Free, developing a socially engaged practice concerned with labour, participation and systems of exchange.
He has undertaken international residencies at Delfina Foundation, London; Gertrude Contemporary, Melbourne; ARCUS Project, Japan; and Khoj International Artists’ Association, New Delhi. Across programmes at Khoj in 2009, 2017 and 2025, he developed projects examining business process outsourcing, informal labour and the growth of India’s gig economy. His work and writing have appeared in Kunstforum International, Unlikely: Journal for Creative Arts and What We Want Is Free: Critical Exchanges in Recent Art.
Recent projects include Cross Hatchings at Khoj, New Delhi, in 2025; a creative development residency with Jaipur Rugs in 2026; and Control Room, a solo exhibition at ____gs, Perth, in 2026. He has presented his research at conferences and symposia in New Delhi, Leiden, Melbourne and Perth.
David Brazier and Kelda Free's socially engaged practice has seen them awarded an associateship at London’s Delfina Foundation, teach MFA students at California College of the Arts and feature in Kunstforum International’s Urban Performance Issue and the book What We Want is Free: Critical Exchanges in Recent Art (Ted Purves and Shane Aslan Selzer, SUNY Press). Their practice has been supported by organisations that include Arts Council England, Arcus Japan, Khoj International Artists’ Association India, NAVA Australia and California College of the Arts. David was awarded a travelling scholarship to study at École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts (Paris), completed his MFA at Goldsmiths College (London) and gained his PhD from Curtin University (Perth) for his research into contemporary forms of labour to inform a critical model of social engagement. Kelda draws on experience as a landscape architect, having worked in London’s most innovative practices where she specialised in arts-based consultation for the development of unique, award-winning projects in the public realm.
