Xanthe Scout Lardner-Burke (b. 1998, South Africa) is an artist primarily, and recently a curator and writer. Her practice is process-based and expressive of [her] interest in materials, structures, language and value production.

Her work of late has been guided by accident and precarity. In painting her substrates are watered down - spilling, slipping and compounding - and necessitating an immediate and responsive sort of working. Therefore paintings begin in one place but can end in another. In turn, sculptures hold trajectories, points or keys. They can inscribe a smaller gesture into the large, gestural work of the paintings. These concerns and working methodologies form a backward or inside-to-outside discussion of structures and signification or value production processes, or the language we give to them.

Scout Lardner-Burke graduated from Michaelis School of Fine Art (2021). She has exhibited with 99 Loop Gallery (Cape Town) in Artsy’s Foundations, Untitled 9.99, Elemental, and With Feeling; the Association for Visual Arts in Together; Marvol Gallery in Beyond the Canvas and various independent curatorial projects since her graduation in 2021. In 2023, she participated in Sessions, an eight-month mentorship program, culminating in the exhibition Pomegranate (2023). In 2024 she curated her debut curatorial project Offcuts at the Association for Visual Arts and participated in ARAK Collective’s Critical Art Writing Workshop at RMB Latitudes. Most recently she has exhibited with 99 Loop Gallery at the Investec Cape Town Art Fair, and presented her solo show with the gallery, titled EXIT STRATEGY in April 2024.

Scout Lardner-Burke works and lives in Cape Town, South Africa.