Announcing: Melbourne Art Fair 2012 Commission Artist
08 May 2012
Melbourne Art Foundation is pleased to announce artist Ian Burns as the Melbourne Art Foundation Commission Artist for the upcoming Melbourne Art Fair, 1-5 August 2012, at the Royal Exhibition Building.
One of Australia's most exciting international exports Ian Burns will create Clouds for the 2012 Melbourne Art Foundation Commission. Against the cultural backdrop of the increasingly virtual nature of the screen-based image, Ian Burns presents a sculptural work that links the technological screen with embodied experience. An imposing sculptural form, Clouds presents the viewer with a pseudo-cinematic series of scenes that suggest a narrative but without end. Generated within the sculpture itself, the scenes are based on images of motion, specifically flight: ladders, toys, tables, lights, salad bowls and other everyday items are repurposed towards the live re-creation of imagery of the clichéd cinematic sublimity of air travel.
Displaying images alongside the process of their very production, Burns builds a diorama of our contemporary visual world. By the inventive nature of the construction, and the use of commonplace objects to create believable live video renditions of apparently real footage, Burns' work encourages a playful spirit of investigation.
Melbourne Art Foundation Co-Directors Emilly-Rose Davis and Laetitia Prunetti said "We are thrilled that Ian Burns is the Commission Artist for MAF 2012. He has exhibited everywhere from Vienna to New York to Dublin and we are excited to have a new large-scale work of Ian's unveiled here in Melbourne. His work is dynamic and visually engaging and invites us to discover the multitude of layers within".
His new work for Melbourne Art Fair 2012, Clouds, will be created in the months preceding the Fair at acclaimed Yarra Valley winery Domaine Chandon. Ian Burns will be Artist in Residence during this time. The objective of the Melbourne Art Foundation Artist Commission is to provide a significant opportunity to a living artist to realise a large-scale artwork for the Melbourne Art Fair. This Commission is later gifted to an Australian public gallery or museum, as announced at the beginning of the Fair.
Ian Burns is the fifth Melbourne Art Foundation Commission Artist – the previous four have been New Zealand artist Michael Parekowhai in 2006, David Griggs and Peter Hennessey in 2008 and Jon Campbell in 2010. Parekowhai's inflatable rabbit Cosmo sculpture was gifted to the National Gallery of Victoria, while Griggs' full-scale circus tent Frog Boy's Dissertation into a new karaoke cult went to Queensland Art Gallery, Gallery of Modern Art (GOMA). Hennessey's huge, black plywood My Humvee (inversion therapy), is prominently located in the University of Queensland Art Museum's foyer. "Hennessey's sculpture is a most significant addition to the University's Collection and has provided the incentive for the UQ Art Museum to develop a Peter Hennessey survey exhibition for 2012. The Melbourne Art Foundation's Commission provides a rare and important opportunity for artists and for the development of Australian contemporary art." Nick Mitzevich, former Director UQ Art Museum, Brisbane.
Ian Burns is an Australian artist based in New York. Named recently in the 'Future Greats' edition of Art Review Magazine (UK), he is an artist on the move, with a forthcoming solo exhibition and commission at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne and an exhibition at mother's tankstation, Dublin along with the Melbourne Art Fair Commission. Ian Burns is a current recipient of a Queensland College of Art, Griffith University Post-Doctoral Research Fellowship. Burns creates what are best described as kinetic assemblages, combining an amalgam of found objects from two dollar shops and department stores like Ikea, with digital technologies, flat screens, tiny closed-circuit spy cameras and cannibalised bits of everyday household 'stuff'. Ian Burns is represented in Australia by Anna Schwartz Gallery.
Melbourne Art Fair is a biennial event, presented by the Melbourne Art Foundation. Melbourne Art Fair 2012 will include over 70 selected national and international galleries, featuring paintings, sculpture, photography, installations and multimedia artworks created by over 900 artists and attracting up to 30,000 visitors.
Ian Burns' major commission will be premiered at Melbourne Art Fair 2012 from Wednesday 1 August at the Vernissage Opening Night, through to Sunday 5 August.
Artist represented by Anna Schwartz Gallery, Melbourne & Sydney and mother's tankstation, Dublin
Media enquiries:
Carolyn Logan 0400 441 025
