David Tristan Birkin

David Birkin (born 1977) is a British artist working in photography, performance and sculpture. In 2009, he married the performance artist, Eloise Fornieles, in a disused slate mine in North Wales. They live and work in London.

Education

2009-11 MA Fine Art, Slade School of Fine Art, UCL
1996-99 BA Human Sciences (Anthropology), University of Oxford

Life and Works

Birkin comes from a family of artists that includes his father, the writer and film director Andrew Birkin, his aunt, the singer and actress Jane Birkin, his grandmother, Judy Campbell, his cousin, Charlotte Gainsbourg and his brother, the late poet and musician, Anno Birkin. He grew up between London and New York City, eventually returning to the UK to study Human Sciences and Anthropology at Oxford University (1996–1999). He worked as an actor in film and theatre, including productions for the National Theatre, Peter Hall Company and Brooklyn Academy of Music, and narrated the English translation of Chris Marker and Alan Resnais' 1953 film Les statues meurent aussi at the French Institute in London. He has since written and photographed editorial commissions on subjects ranging from the deforestation of orangutan habitat in Borneo to the Afghan Film Institute in Kabul, and has performed in films by the artist Nathaniel Mellors for the 2009 Tate Triennial, the 2010 British Art Show at the Hayward Gallery and Ourhouse at the ICA, London.

Birkin had his first solo art exhibition in 2007 in London. The show included three works: a triptych of high-speed videos, a performance-installation and a series of large format photographs titled Confessions for which subjects were invited to confess a secret in front of a camera, while the exposure was determined by the length of time each person chose to speak. The works were bought by the photography collector, Zelda Cheatle, and he subsequently showed in exhibitions at the Courtauld Institute, Paradise Row, Michael Hoppen Gallery, James Hyman Gallery, Other Criteria, Trolley, Hot Shoe, Photomonth, Kraków and Baibakov Art Projects, Moscow. In 2008, he helped set up the Speakers' Society: a non-profit educational organisation sponsored by Outset and dedicated to debate in contemporary art, culture and politics. Past speakers' have included the philosophers John Gray and Simon Critchley, artists Jake Chapman and Cornelia Parker in conversation with Marina Warner, Tate photography curator Simon Baker and the director of the Iraq Body Count, John Sloboda.

In 2009, Birkin began a postgraduate degree at the Slade School of Fine Art (University College London) with a scholarship from the Arts and Humanities Research Council. He received a bursary from the National Media Museum and was awarded the Sovereign Art Prize for his Diptych exhibited at the Barbican in 2010. Birkin graduated from the Slade in 2011 with an MA in Fine Art. He subsequently exhibited as part of the Saatchi Gallery's 2011 New Sensations and curated an exhibition at the Tallinn Kunstihoone Art Hall in Estonia titled Moments of Reprieve: Representing Loss in Contemporary Photography, featuring works by Adam Broomberg & Oliver Chanarin, Ori Gersht, Idris Khan, Eleonora Rossi, Indre Serpytyte and Taryn Simon.

External links

• David Birkin (artist's website): www.davidbirkin.co.uk

References

• David Birkin in 1000 Words Magazine
• David Birkin in Artforum Critics' Picks
• David Birkin in Art in America: review of 'Play' @ Paradise Row Gallery
• David Birkin: essay by Daniel Campbell Blight
• David Birkin at Hot Shoe
• David Birkin in The Telegraph (Culture / Photography)
• David Birkin at the Saatchi Gallery

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Name	Birkin, David Tristan
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Date of birth	1977
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