Sean Burns

United Kingdom

Assistant Editor at Frieze

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frieze.com

Articles

Shifty: Adam Curtis on Politics, Power and the Mind

3 weeks ago | frieze.com | Sean Burns

Frieze PublishingYes, email me reviews, offers, and opinions by artists, writers, and editors from Frieze Frieze EventsYes, email me Frieze Events Inc and Frieze Events Ltd’s global programme information including special offers and benefits In the early 1980s, the UK government, led by newly elected Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, adopted a financial policy known as monetarism – the idea that, by controlling the supply of money, a country can regulate nominal GDP and...
Summer Reads: Books the Frieze Team Can’t Put Down

3 weeks ago | frieze.com | Cassie Packard |Lou Selfridge |Andrew Durbin |Vanessa Peterson |Sean Burns |Ivana Cholakova | +1 more

Frieze PublishingYes, email me reviews, offers, and opinions by artists, writers, and editors from Frieze Frieze EventsYes, email me Frieze Events Inc and Frieze Events Ltd’s global programme information including special offers and benefits The War of Art (2025) | Lauren O’Neill-Butler A book with backbone, Lauren O’Neill-Butler’s The War of Art (2025) draws on oral histories and archival research to elucidate the ways in which artists in the US have protested, agitated and organized since...
Skyler Chen Paints Scenes of Queer Becoming

3 weeks ago | frieze.com | Sean Burns

Frieze PublishingYes, email me reviews, offers, and opinions by artists, writers, and editors from Frieze Frieze EventsYes, email me Frieze Events Inc and Frieze Events Ltd’s global programme information including special offers and benefits ‘Never underestimate the effeminate child’ is the opening line of Gerry Potter’s poem ‘The Effeminate’ (2000).
‘Local Communities Are a Priority’: Ann Gallagher on Launching Goodwood Art Foundation

1 month ago | frieze.com | Sean Burns |Ann Gallagher

Frieze PublishingYes, email me reviews, offers, and opinions by artists, writers, and editors from Frieze Frieze EventsYes, email me Frieze Events Inc and Frieze Events Ltd’s global programme information including special offers and benefits Sean Burns After your influential tenure at Tate, what drew you to the Goodwood Art Foundation, and what excites you most about its potential?
Venice Biennale: Can Architecture Rescue the Future?

1 month ago | frieze.com | Sean Burns

A sign about two-thirds of the way around the Arsenale reads: ‘We are fucked! You can change it!’ The statement by HouseEurope! responds to curator Carlo Ratti’s emphatic call to engage with urgent environmental issues in his exhibition for the 19th Venice Architecture Biennale, ‘Intelligens. Natural. Artificial. Collective.’ His show features more than 750 participants, from farmers to fashion designers, and over 280 projects spread throughout the Arsenale and across the city.
Editor’s Picks: The Defiance of Novelist Edna O’Brien

Mar 12, 2025 | frieze.com | Sean Burns

Frieze Editor’s Picks is a fortnightly column in which a frieze editor shares their recommendations for what to watch, read and listen to. Sinéad O’Shea, Blue Road: The Edna O'Brien Story (2025) In the opening minutes of Sinéad O’Shea’s Blue Road (2025), a new documentary about Edna O’Brien, the celebrated writer’s gentle west-of-Ireland voice murmurs over footage of her younger self: ‘I was born with this ability and demon to write.
The Joyful Vision of David Hockney

Mar 12, 2025 | frieze.com | Sean Burns

After a lifetime of gallivanting between London, Los Angeles and his hometown of Bridlington in the north of England, David Hockney found himself spending the COVID-19 lockdown in his farmhouse in the small Normandy village of Beuvron-en-Auge. To pass the hours of isolation, he began producing a series of landscapes on his iPad – an at-hand device he has been using since 2010 for observational drawings.
A Conversation About Queerness in the Baltics: ‘We Felt Compelled to Tackle These Issues’

Dec 10, 2024 | echogonewrong.com | Sean Burns

Queer Histories from the Baltic Region presented innovative research on queer cultures and artistic practices, highlighting the rich history of gender and sexuality discourses in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. The programme – held at Auto Italia in London and the Edinburgh Art Festival in 2024 – aimed to broaden the understanding of the conditions faced by queer-identifying individuals in the region.
Editor’s Picks: The Cure’s Lament for Collective Grief

Oct 27, 2024 | frieze.com | Sean Burns

Frieze Editor’s Picks is a fortnightly column in which a frieze editor shares their recommendations for what to watch, read and listen to. The Cure, Songs of a Lost World, 2024 Like ‘Plainsong’ (1989) before it, ‘Alone’, the opening track from Songs of a Lost World (2024), The Cure’s first album in 16 years, is so sumptuous that singer Robert Smith doesn’t feel the need to utter a word until halfway in.
The Unsettling Presence of Francis Bacon

Oct 13, 2024 | frieze.com | Sean Burns

Francis Bacon’s beady eyes – the first thing visitors encounter in this comprehensive survey of the artist’s portraiture at London’s National Portrait Gallery (NPG) – exert an influence that permeates the entire exhibition. The painter, then aged 59, stares out like an inquisitive bird in a clip from Peter Gidal’s black and white film Heads (1969). Here is an artist seemingly aware of his self-image and myth, sitting for an intimate filmic portrait so close-cropped you can’t see his ears.