Sean Burns is an artist, editor and writer. He directed the film Dorothy Towers and co-founded Queer Street Press, an independent publishing imprint. He writes extensively on art and culture and serves on an advisory council at Tate. He has taught as a visiting lecturer at the Royal College of Art, London, and the Ruskin School of Art, University of Oxford.
Burns’s work has been presented internationally, including at Auto Italia and the British Film Institute, London; the Edinburgh Art Festival; TULCA Festival of Visual Arts, Galway; Goswell Road, Paris; and the Swiss Architecture Museum, Basel. In 2023, Tate Publishing released his book Death, which examines the intersections of life, love and mortality in art.
He has written major profiles of artists including Marlene Dumas and Sang Woo Kim; contributed essays to books, monographs and exhibition catalogues on figures such as Richard Maguire, Jack O’Brien and Jenkin Van Zyl; and conducted interviews with leading cultural figures including Hilton Als, Adam Curtis, Jack Halberstam, Shirin Neshat and Peter Saville.
In 2024, he received a residency and development grant from Montez Press, with whom he is developing his first novel, forthcoming in 2027. He lives in London and is an associate editor at frieze.
Burns’s work has been presented internationally, including at Auto Italia and the British Film Institute, London; the Edinburgh Art Festival; TULCA Festival of Visual Arts, Galway; Goswell Road, Paris; and the Swiss Architecture Museum, Basel. In 2023, Tate Publishing released his book Death, which examines the intersections of life, love and mortality in art.
He has written major profiles of artists including Marlene Dumas and Sang Woo Kim; contributed essays to books, monographs and exhibition catalogues on figures such as Richard Maguire, Jack O’Brien and Jenkin Van Zyl; and conducted interviews with leading cultural figures including Hilton Als, Adam Curtis, Jack Halberstam, Shirin Neshat and Peter Saville.
In 2024, he received a residency and development grant from Montez Press, with whom he is developing his first novel, forthcoming in 2027. He lives in London and is an associate editor at frieze.
Press for Dorothy Towers
︎Arts of the Working Class
︎BBC News
︎BBC Radio
︎Contemporary Art Library
︎Filmwire
︎Frieze
︎Historic England
︎i-D
︎MAP
︎Recessed Space
︎Studio International
︎Text Zur Kunst
︎The Skinny (Harvey Dimond)
︎The Skinny (Maisie Wills)
︎Wallpaper