Australian conceptual artist Ian Burn’s series of ‘value added’ landscapes overlay paintings by untrained artists with texts about representation and meaning written by Burn himself. In Value added landscape no. 10, green text covers a landscape painting of Townsville by WF Shaw that Burn found in a local op shop, obscuring the sentimental naturalism of the scene. As Burn explains, the text ‘at alternate moments describes the picture, addresses the viewer and reflects on itself as text’, creating a self-referential mirroring effect that makes the original image largely inaccessible.

The term ‘value added’ refers to the economic principle of processing raw materials for increased financial gain, critiquing the ways in which the written description and interpretation of works of art is commonly assumed to enhance our appreciation of it. Burn’s ‘value added’ series synthesises his thinking on the long-held tradition of Australian landscape painting by considering related questions of language, representation and reception.