RESUME

Bill Burns: Biography

www.billburns.ca

Bill Burns’ wide ranging practice includes, artists' books and critical fiction, performance, conceptual art, and social practice in the form of experimental choral work with children and youth.  He is founder of Big Pond Small Fish, Toronto, a platform for radical pedagogy and social terraforming with children.  He is also past president and director of Art Metropole, Toronto. His work about art, animals and advanced industrialism has been shown at Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, England; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Kunsthallen Nikolaj, Copenhagen, Denmark; KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, Germany; the Fondacion Cristina Enea, San Sebastien, Spain; Mendes Wood Gallery, Sao Paulo, Brazil; the Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul, Korea; and the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands.  His experimental choral works, goat milking, honey rendering and sheep shearing projects have been performed at the Royal Ontario Museum. He has published nine artists’ books with publishers in Europe, Canada and the USA. These include When Pain Strikes, a scholarly anthology, (Burns, Busby and Sawchuk, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1999); Bird Radio, (Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther Konig and KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Cologne and Berlin, 2007), The Guide to the Flora and Fauna Information Station: 0.800.0FAUNA0FLORA, (Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, England, 2008), Dogs and Boats and Airplanes told in the form of Ivan the Terrible, (Space Poetry, Copenhagen, 2011) and Hans Ulrich Obrist Hear Us (YYZ BOOKS and Black Dog Publishing, Toronto and London UK, 2015) His artists’ editions are included in collections at Tate Britain - special collection library, London, Cabinet des Estampes, Geneva, the Museum of Modern Art - New York - special collection library, and the Getty Center in Los Angeles. He is the artistic director of the Dogs and Boats and Airplanes Experimental Choir which has produced experimental performances and audio works at the JAF Festival Launceston Australia (2013), Festival of Films About Art, Montreal (2013); Festival of the Moving Image, Buenos Aires (2014); and Nuit Blanche, Toronto (2012). He has been Visiting Artist at Emily Carr University, Vancouver (2005/2006), Krabbesholm School of Art Architecture and Design, Skive, Denmark (2009) and SOVA Yukon, Dawson City, Yukon (2013/2017). He is past director and president of Art Metropole, Toronto (2002 – 2011), and Adjunct Professor in the Department of Graduate Studies at York University, Toronto (2004-2016). In 2009 he received the Danish International Visiting Artist Award (DIVA) from the Danish Arts Agency, Copenhagen, in 2012 he received a Kone Saari Fellowship from the Kone Foundation, Helsinki and in 2007 and 2015 he was Artist-in-Residence at La Cité Internationale des arts, Paris.

Bill studied at Goldsmiths’ College - MA (1988. London, UK).