For this exhibition, Burns debuts a sculptural series in which the material interplay of rock and steel evoke the quiet poetry and sensibilities of craftsmanship. Raised in England’s ‘Black Country’, Burns draws on a region shaped by manual labour and a geology rich in minerals that fueled the Industrial Revolution and fostered a tradition of exceptional stone and metal craftsmanship. This heritage, increasingly eroded by capitalist pressures and faster, more “efficient” production, informs Burns’ investment in material, method and composition.

His latest body of work presents stone and steel in states of becoming, balance, and tension. In its solitary, enduring state, stone stands in stark contrast to the impermanence of the human condition, inviting reflection on our need for connection and introspection. In this context, Burn’s treatment of stone also underscores society’s reverence for it: our trust in it to build, house, and preserve entire civilisations; our impulse to sculpt the human figure from it, despite its fundamental difference from human flesh; and the inevitability that, however much we excavate and manipulate it, stone, which predates the universe itself, will far outlast us.