David Burrows

David Burrows is an artist, writer, and Professor at the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London, where he serves as Head of Undergraduate Fine Art Media. Previously, he was Reader in Fine Art at Birmingham City University from 1997 until 2010. His work spans artistic practice, theoretical writing, and collaborative projects that explore the intersections of art, philosophy, and cultural theory.

Burrows studied at Goldsmiths College, graduating in 1994. His educational background in fine art has informed his dual career as both practitioner and theorist, with a focus on how artistic practice engages with philosophical concepts and cultural formations.

His research centers on notions and concepts of the new in sacred, mass, and avant-garde cultures, with particular interest in how fiction functions as a transformative process. Burrows investigates impermanence and immanence, violence, destruction, crisis, and disorientation as structural elements within various cultural formations. He draws extensively on continental philosophy, particularly examining subjectivity, ontology, and performance theory. A significant portion of his work explores diagrammatic practices in art and how these facilitate the production of impossible objects and events, connecting artistic practice with mathematical and topological concepts.

Analysis of Burrows' publication history reveals consistent engagement with performance fiction, diagrammatic theory, and the relationship between art and philosophy. His work demonstrates an evolving trajectory from examining structural elements of cultural formations to developing theoretical frameworks for understanding art as diagrammatic practice. The publications show increasing sophistication in connecting artistic practice with philosophical concepts, particularly through his ongoing collaboration Plastique Fantastique, which serves as both artistic vehicle and theoretical laboratory.

• Becks Futures selection (2001)
• Paul Hamlyn Visual Artists Award (2003)

Burrows has extensive teaching experience, having instructed undergraduates, graduates, and research students while supervising two doctoral students to completion. His academic work is deeply integrated with his artistic practice, creating a reciprocal relationship between theory and creation. While specific grant information isn't detailed in the provided text, his numerous exhibitions and publications suggest successful funding for artistic and research projects. His collaborative work with Simon O'Sullivan as Plastique Fantastique represents a significant sustained research project spanning over fifteen years.

Burrows' primary creative laboratory is the performance-fiction collaboration Plastique Fantastique, which he has developed with Simon O'Sullivan since 2005. This project functions as a multi-platform research environment exploring the relationship between aesthetics, politics, and the sacred through various media including events, films, comics, writing, installations, and artifacts. Plastique Fantastique operates as a conceptual framework that generates what Burrows describes as 'communiqués from the extreme past and future' that are baroque, subversively urgent, and frequently participatory. This ongoing project represents his most sustained investigation into the transformative potential of fiction and performance as processes through which worlds and relations are formed and maintained.