Join current artist-in-residence Bill Burns to learn more about what he has been up to throughout his time at Griffin Art Projects, as a part of The Great Exchange project.

Bill Burns’ work about advanced industrialism, donkeys, goat’s milk, salt, safety gear, and honey bees has been shown at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin; Mendes Wood Gallery, Sao Paulo; 303 Gallery, New York; the Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul, and the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam.He has published artists’ books with publishers in Canada, Germany, USA, UK, Austria, and Denmark. His most recent titles include A Book About the Power 100, published by Verlag Mark Pezinger, Vienna (2018)  and  Hans Ulrich Obrist Hear Us, published by YYZ BOOKS and Black Dog Publishing, London, UK (2016). His artists’ editions are included in collections at Tate Britain, London, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Getty Center, Los Angeles. Mr Burns is also Artistic Director of the Dogs and Boats and Airplanes Experimental Children’s Choir. The choir has produced live performances and audio works at festivals in Australia, Argentina, the UK and Canada.

Bill Burns studied under Mowry Baden at University of Victoria, Canada and with Gerard Hemsworth and John Latham at Goldsmiths College, London, England. He is represented by MKG127, Toronto; C4 Contemporary, Los Angeles.

The Great Exchange is an exhibition and residency project that explores ideas of barter, trade and exchange to posit a possibility for a post-capitalist future. As art markets move into non-fungible motifs by self-declared non-artists, and the global pandemic makes the words ‘supply chain’ a kitchen table conversation, no longer limited to the trade room floor, a new anti-globalization model emerges.

The Great Exchange examines how quotidian, relational and proximate modes of exchange might form a potential future, reducing global capitalism by burnishing it with intimacy, community and care. The project is comprised of Teeth, Loan and Trust Company, Consolidated: The Trylowsky Collection, an exhibition held onsite at Griffin Art Projects and Trapp Projects satellite exhibition at Dr. Trylowsky’s dental office in 2021, and the artist residency, Bill Burns: Three short films and several songs about Donkeys, Cowboys, Truckers and Container Ships. With a publication and public program this project builds uniquely on Griffin’s unique mandate to examine new currents in contemporary collecting practices to further research how collections and markets can evolve and become radical actions for emancipation.