Burford’s psychologically charged domestic tableaus’ present us with a logic in which withdrawal
and alienation facilitate, for his protagonists, the ecstatic realization of fantastic possibilities that are
prohibited by a world to which, as the result of their alienation, they are no longer bound.
There is a correspondence between this logic and that of the religious martyr whose
defiance of accepted terms of the relationship between the physical and metaphysical spheres,
result in an alienation which advances their deliverance.
In Burford’s works we witness individuals involved in the drama of their own fantasized
deliverance into a world of sublime possibility. As in martyrdom their deliverance occasions ecstasy,
violence, endurance, exposure, humiliation, masochism, neglect, solitude, and surrender.
Michael Newall writes, “the figures Burford portrays have lost control …this loss of
control…involves a sort of letting go, a surrender of self to these desires and sensations which, in
this moment of self-abnegation, become sublime…in surrendering to these forces, in giving
themselves over to them, they might get a momentary intimation of a dissolution of the self in the
world. And if we can bring ourselves to empathize with them, so might we”.
In 1999 Kristian Burford was exhibited in the Moet & Chandon Australian Art Foundation Touring
Exhibition and won the coveted Anne and Gordon Samstag International Visual Arts Scholarship.
He undertook a Master of Fine Arts at Art Centre College of Design in California, USA, where he
presently resides.
He has participated in numerous exhibitions in Australia as well as in the U.S. including “Morbid
Curiosity” curated by Jan Tumlir which traveled from Los Angeles to New York; “The Uncanny” at
the Tate Liverpool, United Kingdom, and Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig, Vienna. He was
exhibited at the National Gallery of Australia as a finalist in the National Sculpture Award and was a
highly commended finalist for the Helen Lempriere National Sculpture Award in 2001. Kristian
Burford is represented by I-20, New York and The Happy Lion, Los Angeles.