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Staff Profile

Professor Andrew Burton

Professor of Fine Art

Background


My research situations sculpture and installation and in relation to landscape, historic sites and architecture. I lead a team researching the commissioning and consumption of contemporary art in heritage places which explores how and why heritage organisations commission contemporary art, and what the benefits are for artists, audiences and other stakeholders. 

In my artistic practice, I take an experimental approach to materials and processes, using materials traditionally associated with sculpture and combining them with other materials and methods of making that embody impermanence. 

I have worked extensively in India, China and Africa where I collaborate with artists, artisans and traditional craft workers. The work we make explores the territory between art, craft and quotidian objects and is characterised by the centrality of the human hand in the making process. 

My current work in Africa, where I have led three projects funded by the AHRC Global Challenges Research Fund for international  development is conducted in collaboration with art professionals and academics in the region, and explores the dynamics of artists' careers and livelihoods. 

I have completed many artist residencies, including recently at the European Ceramics Work Centre in the Netherlands, and the Bundanon Trust and Hill End in Australia, where I made work about a landscape of eucalyptus trees and corrugated iron structures. In 2015 I was awarded the Gold Prize by the Korea Ceramic Biennial for my work 'Monument' and was invited by the Korea Ceramic Foundation in 2019 to construct and perform a work that would speak to the need to reconcile tensions between North and South Korea. The work combined 100 ancient kimchi jars with thousands of tiny, hand-made bricks. 

I have supervised, and continue to supervise PhD students on a range of topics ranging from the use of concrete in contemporary sculpture to the relationship between landscape, archaeology and contemporary sculpture. I welcome inquiries from prospective PhD applicants interested in my fields of specialism. 


Research

My research and creative practice is in the field of contemporary sculpture with an emphasis on material, process and form.  I work with materials as various as chilli peppers, bamboo, clay and cow dung - often exploring how these materials can work in combination with each other. Much of m work is collaborative. In 2011 I worked  with a group of village women from farming communities around Delhi to create a group of 'bithooras' -  extraordinary cow-dung structures based on fuel stores found on the periphery of Delhi for the National Craft Museum in Delhi. More recently I have been working with artisan workers in Kampala to explore how everyday low-tech practices can find different resonances through visual art. I have also been working in East Africa with a group of visual art professionals, exploring a flourishing visual art ecology in the region.  

Much of my work experiments with reclaiming and re-using materials. My sculptures are often conceived as temporary structures – after a sculpture has been resolved it is broken up, with the component parts salvaged to form the building blocks for the next work. My sculptures made from miniature bricks are  painted or coloured before they are dismantled. Over time, and as the bricks are formed into many different sculptures they gradually acquire on their surfaces a patina of the scraps of paint, cement and glaze that still remain. These surfaces convey a sense of their own history, alluding to the way in which over history architectural structures have anticipated our current concern with reuse.This work explores scale, referencing both monumental and day-to-day structures. In its emphasis on the re-use and recycling  of earlier sculpture, the works provoke questions about the nature of monumentality and tensions between conservation and sustainability.

Since 2016 we have been developing work funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council exploring contemporary art commissioned for heritage places. This extended project has explored the commissioning  of temporary visual art in heritage sites from multiple perspectives: does contemporary visual art sited in heritage properties really change the way visitors understand and appreciate the property itself? What challenges do artists face when they undertake these kinds of project? What is the landscape of this activity across the UK? Mapping Contemporary Art in the Heritage Experience is a collaboration between Newcastle and Leeds universities, the National Trust, English Heritage, the Churches Conservation Trust, Arts Council England and the Contemporary Visual Art Network. 


Teaching
I teach across all stages of the undergraduate and postgraduate Fine Art programmes.
Publications