Galv Fountain is Stephen's first solo show in Germany and was held at The Gimp in Berlin in September 2024.
The exhibition responds to the ongoing competition for public space in urban areas. Public space was once conceived as a democratic space for everyone, but is less like that today, with constant negotiations between citizens who want to leave their mark and authorities who seek to regulate and control it. At the heart of Burke's exploration is the growing obsession of state institutions with security (a concept Michel Foucault famously termed the "disciplinary society"). A testament to this is the rise of so-called defensive architecture, which is primarily aimed at restricting the free movement of a city's inhabitants.
Burke often reclaims materials directly from the street that are tied to defensive architecture, such as fences or walls, objects with a strong tactility. He later reconfigures these materials into new objects that reference, subvert and question the values by which we design our society.