A review of the 40-year practice of one of australia’s most provocative artists including works on paper, documentation and archival material from news media and art press, film (super 8 and low-budget 16mm), and live performance.

One of Australia’s true avant garde and socially active Artists who’s works using interactivity, surveillance, performance film, TV, video and painting often broke new ground in their innovative uses of the media.

A majority of the works remain unknown to an Australian audience although he grew up in the WA wheatbelt where he now lives again. He lived and worked out of New York for 20 years mostly known there for his film and theatre work and few here realise the importance of the work or his place in the history of Australian art.

The arrest of his work A Change of Plan at the art gallery of NSW in 1973 became a platform for artists' rights in public galleries, his successful postcard campaign in Mildura to have crosswalks installed won the American institute for graphic arts book award in 77 and his super 8 feature film why Cars? – CARnage! won the New York creative Artists award and predicted the destruction of the world trade centre by Arab extremists decades before 9/11. His use of super 8 as a serious medium predates any of the movements either in the States or in Australia.

His extremely low budget 16 mm film Against the Grain took the writings of Jean Genet on terrorism and state control and contexualised it within an Australian context and has been translated into Japanese and Spanish and he is probably the only white man to make an international award winning comedy about the stolen generation and get away with it, again way before it became the public issue it is today. - excerpt from Time Burns's press release

Tim Burns retrospective at AEAF will include a selection of documentation, performances & screenings of key films: Against the Grain; Luke’s Party; Why Cars? CARnage! and others.