We are happy to announce that Luke Burton is this year’s artist-in-residence at Eltham College. Burton will be working in a studio in the art department from August to July 2024 as well as working with students from both the junior and senior schools on various projects and workshops. In April next year, he will present an exhibition at the Gerald Moore Gallery.
Burton has an ongoing interest in how symbolism operates across visual culture and questions the relationship between craft, ornament and fine art. He sees painting within an expanded field, specifically in his use of media such as folding screens, flower presses, or vitreous enamels. These contrasting modes also show Burton’s interest in the idea of scale in relation to painting: the scale of architecture, the human scale, and the scale of the miniature or handheld. How do these various scales create a physical and psychic space for intimacy, alienation, empathy or privilege? Recently, during a three-month residency at the British School at Rome, Burton’s research led him to explore the sticky concept of style and its relationship to ideas around language in painting.
He holds a BA in Painting from Chelsea College of Art and an MA in Sculpture from the Royal College of Art. He has exhibited widely including at ICA, London; Turner Contemporary, Margate, National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh; Worcester Art Museum, Worcester; PADA, Lisbon; Kinokino Kunstall, Stavanger, Norway; Bosse and Baum Gallery, London; TJ Boulting Gallery, London; and Union Gallery, London.
Burton was Visiting Fellow and Artist-in-Resident at Girton College, Cambridge University in 2019-20. He received a Jerwood Visual Arts Bursary in 2017 and the Lewisham Art House Award in 2014. In 2023, he received the Abbey Fellowship in Painting at the British School at Rome.
Artist studio portrait, British School at Rome. Photo: Luana Rigolli
Sample artworks-
'Semi-Final Selection', 2022, oil and acrylic on canvas, 150cm x 120cm. Photo: Corey Bartle-Sanderson
'Fountain Award Scheme (back)', 2018, oil and acrylic on birch plywood, 260cm x 160cm x 40cm. Photo: Damian Griffith
'Young Captain', 2022, vitreous enamel on copper, dimensions variable. Photo: Bosse and Baum Gallery