Ian Burn was an influential Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

n conceptual art

Conceptual art

Conceptual art is art in which the concept or idea involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic and material concerns. Many of the works, sometimes called installations, of the artist Sol LeWitt may be constructed by anyone simply by following a set of written instructions...

ist. He was a notable member of the Art and Language group that flourished in the 1970s

1970s

File:1970s decade montage.png|From left, clockwise: US President Richard Nixon doing the V for Victory sign after his resignation from office after the Watergate scandal in 1974; Refugees aboard a US naval boat after the Fall of Saigon, leading to the end of the Vietnam War in 1975; The 1973 oil...

. Ian Burn was also an art writer, curator

Curator

A curator is a manager or overseer. Traditionally, a curator or keeper of a cultural heritage institution is a content specialist responsible for an institution's collections and involved with the interpretation of heritage material...

, and scholar.

Biography

Ian Burn was born on December 29, 1939 in Geelong, Australia.

Burn studied art at the National School Of Art in Melbourne

Melbourne

Melbourne is the capital and most populous city in the state of Victoria, and the second most populous city in Australia. The Melbourne City Centre is the hub of the greater metropolitan area and the Census statistical division—of which "Melbourne" is the common name. As of June 2009, the greater...

. He became affiliated with the Art and Language collective when he moved to London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

 in 1964 and remained a part of the group when he moved to New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

 in 1967. In 1977 Burn returned to Australia to teach at Sydney University.

Ian Burn drowned

Drowning

Drowning is death from asphyxia due to suffocation caused by water entering the lungs and preventing the absorption of oxygen leading to cerebral hypoxia....

 in 1993 while swimming in rough seas.

Notable work

"Xerox Book", 1968 - 100 iterative copies of a blank sheet of white paper

Paper

Paper is a thin material mainly used for writing upon, printing upon, drawing or for packaging. It is produced by pressing together moist fibers, typically cellulose pulp derived from wood, rags or grasses, and drying them into flexible sheets....

 on a Xerox

Xerox

Xerox Corporation is an American multinational document management corporation that produced and sells a range of color and black-and-white printers, multifunction systems, photo copiers, digital production printing presses, and related consulting services and supplies...

 720, arranged in a book in the order they were created. The final pages in the series of copies were filled with black forms that had arisen slowly from the 'error' of the machine.

External links

• http://www.printsandprintmaking.gov.au/catalogues/artist/2202/ian-burn.aspx – A gallery of Ian Burn's art.