Sean Burn

Sean Burn is a writer, performer and outsider artist with a growing international reputation. he is also actively involved nationally in disability arts. he was shortlisted for a dadafest disability arts award 2009 and is currently outside in artist in residence to the new gallery walsall in association with dash (disability arts shropshire) where he is reclaiming the languages of lunacy. this suite of work - sci-ents? sci-aint! - is a challenge to psychiatry, a privileged form of storytelling and not a science and is based on his own long history as frequently (enforced) mental health service-user.

Sean Burn’s work is ironic, insightful and an original narrative on the discourse of what is a normal (or abnormal) psychology. It crisis-crosses the matter of pathology with the cultural context of mental being. Sean’s work is art of a quality and wit rarely seen: it uses wit through the use of language to cite an alternative route through mental health that is critical of the illusions of order and control that medicine (all medicine) seeks to bring to the chaos that is humanity. Sean’s inventiveness is truly about bio-diversity of humanity and its many states of being; usually in complete opposition to those who seek to restore order where there is not and should not be: the human mind. Dr Paul A. Darke, Visual Arts Manager. DASH - Disability Arts in Shropshire