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Dispatch Review

Candid art criticism

Dispatch Review respectfully acknowledges the Whadjuk people as the traditional owners and custodians of the lands upon which we live and work. We pay deep respect to Elders past and present. Always was, always will be Aboriginal land.
Reviews:

  1. Tim Burns – The Kinetic Momen by Cassandra Otterman-Emmett.
  2. Picaresque: A Response to Marco Marcon by Francis Russell & Rejoinder by Marco Marcon.
  3. Bildungsroman by Marco Marcon.
  4. There is nothing you need to do here by Riley Landau.
  5. All alone in the dark: After Elvira Madigan (1967), Salon dans l’obscurité by Amy Hickman.
  6. Hatched Dispatched 2026 by Lilian Brown, Lucy Kilroe, Riley Landau, Cassandra Otterman-Emmett, and Charlotte Newman.
  7. Felix McNamara’s Atrocities by Patrick Zaia.
  8. Once More with Feeling by Grace Coppola.
  9. Deanna Hitti's Dangerous Pleasures by Anna Daly.
  10. Sherrie Levine: Press Release by Sam Beard.
  11. BCC at Blindside by Diego Ramírez.
  12. Jack Ball, Mystery Solved by Siân McIntyre.
  13. 2026 Power 100 by Dispatch Review.
  14. Patches in a Glowing Landscape: A Reading Gregory Pryor’s Huddle Exhibition by Jonathan W. Marshall.
  15. Pure Intention: Singapore Biennale 2025–26  by Marco Marcon.
  16. Gemma Weston, WITNESSING by Sam Beard and Francis Russell.
  17. Painting Itself: Artist Interviews by Felicity Ostergaard and William Bromage.
  18. Flooding The Zone by Paul Sutherland.
  19. Something Old, Something New by Duncan McKay.
  20. Theo Koning by Marco Marcon.
  21. Jacob Kotzee: Stimela by Grace Coppola.
  22. Feel Bad Hit of the Summer Pt. 2 by Francis Russell.
  23. Isn’t there someone you forgot to ask? by Amy Hickman.
  24. Isabel Bereczky: Outsole by Chelsea Hopper.
  25. On Dreaming by Stirling Kain.
  26. Feel Bad Hit of the Summer Pt. 1 by Francis Russell.
  27. Lucas “Granpa” Abela at _____g.s by Nalinie See.
  28. Alana Hunt, A Deceptively Simple Need, PICA by Marco Marcon.
  29. Wang Qingsong’s Everlasting Inscription by Sam Beard.
  30. Dispatch Review's 2025 Wrap-up with Darren Jorgensen, Aimee Dodds, and Sam Beard.
  31. Ripairian: Imprinting the Living Landscape by Annette Peterson.
  32. Corpse-Watching Comes to Perth by Riley Landau.
  33. Queering Kin: Amos Gebhardt’s Family Portrait by Riley Landau.
  34. Forget AI by Francis Russell.
  35. Acid Utopia: Judgment Day by Aimee Dodds.
  36. Mollescent Irritant: Liam Gillick at Disneyland Paris by Aimee Dodds.
  37. Kieron Broadhurst and Ash Tower: Border Chronicle by Soph Grey.
  38. Nan Goldin, Voyeurism, and the NGA by Jess van Heerden.
  39. Bombard the Headquarters: An Interview with Linda Jaivin by Sam Beard.
  40. Hatched Dispatched 2025, by Maraya Takoniatis, Riley Landau, Nalinie See, Kye Fisher, and Jess van Heerden.
  41. Sneak Out by Tara Heffernan.
  42. By Chance, Li Gang by Sam Beard.
  43. Nazila Jahangir, Immigration by Sam Beard.
  44. Regenerative Strategies: A Celestial Reflection by Jess van Heerden.
  45. Cast in (Mostly) Bronze at AGWA by Riley Landau.
  46. Missed Shows and Mini Reviews by Darren Jorgensen, Riley Landau, Amelia Birch, and Sam Beard.
  47. 2025 Power 100, by Dispatch Review.
  48. Dan Bourke, Keywords, AVA by Francis Russell.
  49. Revivification at AGWA by Angus Bowskill.
  50. The Australian Dream and other Fictions by Jess van Heerden.
  51. The Vessel Report by Sam Beard.
  52. Jacob Kotzee’s flowerfield by Scott Price.
  53. Jeff Gibson: False Gestalt by Francis Russell.
  54. Skyward, or Boonji Spaceman and the Giant Kebab by Nick FitzPatrick.
  55. Sam Bloor and Jesse Marlow: Street Posters 2020–2025 by Sam Beard.
  56. Mervyn Street: Stolen Wages by Darren Jorgensen.
  57. 100 Sculpture Ideas for Sculptures by the Sea by Rainy Colbert.
  58. Kate Mitchell’s Idea Induction by Amelia Birch.
  59. Mai Nguyễn-Long’s Doba Nation by Sam Beard.
  60. A conversation with Jo Darbyshire, by Stirling Kain.
  61. Dispatch Review’s 2024 Wrap-up with Darren Jorgensen, Sam Beard, Aimee Dodds, Francis Russell, and Tara Heffernan.
  62. The people yearn... by Max Vickery and Erin Russell.
  63. An invitation to dance by Sam Beard.
  64. We Talk, We Discuss: An Interview with Taring Padi by Max Vickery.
  65. AGWA x PrideFEST by Felicity Bean.
  66. Tim Meakins, Body Mould by Sam Beard.
  67. Nick FitzPatrick, Hero Image by Francis Russell.
  68. Jacob Kotzee, Arrangements by Dan Glover.
  69. Hollow Icons: Desmond Mah at Mossenson by Darren Jorgensen.
  70. Pilgrimage: An interview with Vedika Rampal.
  71. The UnAustralian: Doubling Double Nation – An interview with Rex Butler.
  72. Negative Criticism: A Year of Dispatch Review by Tara Heffernan.
  73. Custodians as Reverse Monument by Darren Jorgensen.
  74. End of History – LWAG by Francis Russell.
  75. Hatched Dispatched 2024 by Dan Glover, Jess van Heerden, Nalinie See & Sam Beard.
  76. David Bromfield: A critic at large and ‘Where did the artists go?’
  77. Me, Also Me by Sam Beard.
  78. Paper Trails Between Lion and Swan by Sam Beard.
  79. Ceramically Speaking by Ben Yaxley. 
  80. The Strelley Mob by Sam Harper.
  81. Rone: The Mighty Success by Leslie Thompson.
  82. Paper Trails: An interview with Yeo Chee Kiong by Sam Beard.
  83. 2024 Power 100 by Dispatch Review.
  84. Foresight & Fiction by Ben Yaxley.
  85. Twin Peaks Was 30 by Matthew Taggart.
  86. Breaking News: It’s Rone! by Sam Beard.
  87. Look, looking at Anna Park by Amelia Birch.
  88. The Fan by Francis Russell.
  89. Follower, Leader by Maraya Takoniatis.
  90. Wanneroo Warholamania by Sam Beard.
  91. Death Metal Summer by Sam Beard.
  92. Players, Places: Reprised, Renewed, Reviewed by Aimee Dodds.
  93. Scholtz: Two Worlds Apart by  Corderoy, Fisher, Flaherty, Wilson, Fletcher,  Jorgensen, & Glover.
  94. Partial Sightings by Sam Beard.
  95. True! Crime. by Aimee Dodds.
  96. The Human Condition by Rex Butler.
  97. Rebecca Baumann’s Light Event by Sam Beard.
  98. Rejoinder: Archival / Activism by Max Vickery.
  99. Access and Denial in The Purple Shall Govern by Jess van Heerden.
  100. 4Spells by Sam Beard.
  101. Abstract art, DMT capitalism and the ugliness of David Attwood’s paintings
    by Darren Jorgensen.
  102. Unearthing new epistemologies of extraction by Samuel Beilby.
  103. Seek Wisdom by Max Vickery.
  104. Something for Everyone by Sam Beard.
  105. Violent Sludge by Aimee Dodds.
  106. State of Abstraction by Francis Russell.
  107. Double Histories: Special Issue, with texts by Ian McLean, Terry Smith, and Darren Jorgensen & Sam Beard.
  108. Six Missing Shows by Sam Beard.
  109. What We Memorialise by Max Vickery.
  110. At the End of the Land by Amelia Birch.
  111. The beautiful is useful by Sam Beard.
  112. ām / ammā / mā maram by Zali Morgan.
  113. Making Ground, Breaking Ground by Maraya Takoniatis.
  114. Art as Asset by Sam Beard.
  115. Cactus Malpractice by Aimee Dodds.
  116. Sweet sweet pea by Sam Beard.
  117. COBRA by Francis Russell.
  118. PICA Barn by Sam Beard.
  119. Gallery Hotel Metro by Aimee Dodds.
  120. A Stroll Through the Sacred, Profane, and Bizarre by Samuel Beilby.
  121. Filling in the Gaps at Spacingout by Maraya Takoniatis.
  122. Disneyland Cosmoplitanism by Sam Beard.
  123. Discovering Revenue by Amelia Birch.
  124. Uncomfortable Borrowing by Jess van Heerden.
  125. It’s Not That Strange by Stirling Kain.
  126. Hatched Dispatched 2023 by Sam Beard & Aimee Dodds.
  127. Fuck the Class System by Jess van Heerden, Jacinta Posik, Darren Jorgensen, et al.
  128. Wild About Nothing by Sam Beard.
  129. Paranoiac, Peripatetic: Pet Projects by Aimee Dodds.
  130. An Odd Moment for Women’s Art by Maraya Takoniatis.
  131. Transmutations by Sam Beard.
  132. The Post-Vandal by Sam Beard.
  133. Art Thugs and Humbugs by Max Vickery.
  134. Disneyland, Paris, Ardross and the artworld by Darren Jorgensen.
  135. Bizarrely, A Biennale by Aimee Dodds.
  136. Venus in Tullamarine by Sam Beard.
  137. Weird Rituals by Sam Beard.
  138. Random Cube by Francis Russell.
  139. Yeah, Nah, Rockpool by Aimee Dodds.
  140. Towards a Blind Horizon by Kieron Broadhurst.
  141. Being Realistic by Sam Beard.
Tim Burns – The Kinetic Moment
by Cassandra Otterman-Emmett
Saturday, 7 November 2026

For an artist who ‘seemed to be everywhere in everything and yet elusively was nowhere to be found,’[1] Tim Burns’ retrospective exhibition The Kinetic Moment firmly establishes his canonical figuration in countercultural history. The exhibition, held at  Art Gallery of Western Australia, marks two firsts: the first ever solo-show of Burns’ at a state gallery, as well as the first show curated by Aimee Dodds, and proves that both are masters of their crafts. Consisting of fragments from Burns’ entire career, spanning from performance documentation, No-Wave cinema, printed ephemera, collaborative works, to paintings from as recent as 2025, The Kinetic Moment feels much more definitive and comprehensive than many recent survey shows at AGWA. It also offers insights into less “popular” or institutionally accepted works. While the curation of performance-based and post-object artworks tends to fall flat, given the ephemeral nature of the works, Dodds has effectively translated the pieces into entertaining and visually engaging artworks in their own right.
        Like Burns himself, The Kinetic Moment understands that comedy is one of the most effective ways to communicate meaning. The exhibition utilises visual puns, like the massive prints of explosions (that which blows up is blown up) and the ascending series of images of people traversing the impossible-to-descend staircase in Art Castle, a series of prints of Burns’ performance Start—Finish Event? (1973). These ephemeral performances are given new life and maintain their original meaning and in-your-face-ness. While it was not a major theme, the comedic aspect definitely enhanced the exhibit (they missed a trick with My 40th Birthday though: a series zooming in on his face at the moment of orgasm is perhaps the most obvious “kinetic moment” in the whole show).


Installation view of My 40th Birthday, c. 1987, in Tim Burns – The Kinetic Moment, The Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth, 17 October 2026 – 28 February 2027. Photography by Aleph.

However, the exhibit faces the eternal downfall of archiving performance and post-object art: how can you properly present an artwork which is so time- and space-specific when you are so far removed from its time and space? The true “kinetic moment” is never properly experienced as a visitor to the gallery; we see only images of it taking place and the aftermath, missing the moment itself. Yet there is no real alternative; as set out by Philip Auslander in The Performativity of Performance Documentation, “it is not the initial presence of an audience that makes an event a work of performance art: it is its framing as performance through the performative act of documenting it as such.”[2] After all, how can the explosions of Mullaloo Beach, January 1974, with four others, just after 7:00AM and Exploding TV, Boya Quarry (1974) be acts of performance art when done without an audience? They exist solely in the realm of their documentation and subsequent transformation into mail art and photographic prints, but the performances themselves are as canonical to Burns’ oeuvre as any other, brought to life through their crystallisation in time. As far as performance documentation goes, The Kinetic Moment is one of the most effective displays of documentation as artwork in itself, especially when they are as imaginatively comedic as Art Castle and the other visual puns and in-your-face as the massive image of an explosion that greets you as you enter the exhibit.
        The show falls short only in the way any exhibition of its kind does; such an abrasive, radical, anti-institutional artist can never truly be properly represented in a state-funded, state-run gallery. The radical messaging is watered down by its being assimilated into the institution it attacks; even within the show itself, a story is recounted where Tim Burns, upset by the absence of radicalism in the exhibition Radical Ecologies in which he was included at PICA in 2016, “sprayed his prints with a lurid pink paint and was removed from the premises.”[3] We see the aftermath of this auto-destructive protest, archival silkscreens vandalised with a shock of pink, but that spirit of radicalism above institutionalisation is absent from the series, as well as the rest of the once-provocative pieces.

Installation view of the spray painted prints from Radical Ecologies, in Tim Burns – The Kinetic Moment, The Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth, 17 October 2026 – 28 February 2027. Photography by Aleph.

Despite the apparent sublimation of radicalism, institutional critique—a term coined by Andrea Fraser—has, according to Fraser, ‘always been institutionalized. It could only have emerged within and, like all art, can only function within the institution [of] art’.[4] Burns’ kinetic moments are only shocking within an institutional context in which a work like For the Sake of Art (1974) subverts ideas of the barrier between documentation and performance, and in which A Change of Plan (1973) subverts the traditional subject/object relationships in white-box institutions. The controversies and consequences of Minefield (1973; closed down for its potentially hazardous use of explosives) and A Change of Plan (which resulted in an obscenity charge in 1973) only reinforce the institutional critique, as they push the boundaries of what is truly acceptable within the institutions themselves. This critique is still effective in the context of The Kinetic Moment. Yet, it is interesting to consider whether any of these works still be as shocking or influential in today’s artistic landscape—or have institutions evolved past the need for explosives?


Footnotes:

1. Edward Colless quoted by Aimee Dodds in her essay “Time Smoking: A Picture” in the book that accompanies the exhibition.

2. Philip Auslander, “The Performativity of Performance Documentation,” PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art 28, no. 3 (2006): 7.

3. Wall text, Tim Burns – The Kinetic Moment, Art Gallery of Western Australia, 2025; see also Laetitia Wilson, “Radical Ecologies,” Artlink, https://www.artlink.com.au/articles/4520/radical-ecologies/.

4. Andrea Fraser, “FROM THE CRITIQUE OF INSTITUTIONS TO AN INSTITUTION OF CRITIQUE,” Artforum, September 1, 2005, https://www.artforum.com/features/from-the-critique-of-institutions-to-an-institution-of-critique-172201/.


Images: Installation view, Tim Burns – The Kinetic Moment, The Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth, 17 October 2026 – 28 February 2027. Photography by Aleph.