The inimitable Tim Burns is a multi media film video print performance artist who has been producing a diverse range of works since the 1970s. He has published a pedestrian series of postcards (winner of the 1978 The American institute of Graphic Arts, Artists book award) and the performance transcript Not ceasing to loiter (Flinders University, 1975).
For Bun – Bury ‘One in a Series of Beatings’ he is currently working with a transcript of a successful self-defended trial against the hindering of police. The proposed work would examine police and law aspects in WA and possibly involve creating drawings/photographs for a performance/book on beatings. He is looking for a writer interested and willing to explore these subjects.
Artist bio:
Tim Burns is a legendary figure in the history of Australian underground art. He rose to notoriety in the early 1970s with a series of (literally) explosive art actions, before decamping to New York, where he remained, on and off until the mid-1990s. He now resides on a large property near the town of York, in Western Australia. Rather than identifying as a painter, filmmaker, karaoke videographer, installation artist, theatre director or performer (although he has done all these and more), Burns calls himself “a context artist”. What unites the hugely varied set of projects Burns has worked on over the last forty years is a constant desire to set up situations which critically reflect on our hypermediated, industrialised western society. His interventions are usually created live, in the public sphere, rather than being quietly crafted in the privacy of a studio setting. More often than not, they result in some sort of dramatic surprise or shift in the participants’ attention.