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Contribution to ‘Wearable Expressions 2008: Sixth Biennial Exhibition’, February 22nd – 20th April 2008

Burton’s creative practice encompasses the domains of art, graphic imagery and conceptual garment making. For him the garment is a vehicle to carry images that echo the human body, particularly the way it is socially formed through cultural manners and the historical moment of the fashionable. His fabric printing technique brings traditional print making processes into the framework of the digital. He has developed his technique’s potential for graphic layering: the integration of marks and images through overprinting. Through it he explores repetition and the emergence of graphic form. He blends two-dimensional imagery into digital montage by manipulating hand-drawn, found and ‘curated’ imagery. Both ‘garment’ artworks selected for the exhibition – ‘Shiva Tattava’ and ‘The Lady’ – use these techniques. The garment form of the coat and the ritual robe of the kaftan conceal and cover. Burton uses graphic imagery to break down the material barrier of the cloth because it distracts from the social and cultural identity of the wearer and the meaning of the garment itself. ‘Shiva Tattava’ is a large-scale digitally-printed installation garment (5 metres in length) and ‘The Lady’ is a digitally, and silkscreen, printed coat. Burton’s many research visits to Northern India have also helped to inform and shape his practice. The symbolic, decorative and ritual traditions to be found in the making of Indian fabrics have been an important influence and continue to be a source of inspiration for his on-going research. The sixth international biennial of “the ultimate in wearable art” featured 250 exhibits of clothing, jewellery and accessories by 166 artists from 30 USA states and 15 other countries. The panel of jurors consisted of peers of international standing, included Rebecca Brown-Thompson (New Zealand), Arline Fisch (USA), Charles Lewton-Brain (Canada), Glenys Mann (Australia), Sunita Patterson (USA) and Beatrijs Sterk (Germany).