Tim Russell is an artist who works across a variety of media. Much of his work is performance based, but also involves writing, film, photography and other alternative photographic processes.

One of the central themes of his work is a mythography of place and totemic moments. The totemic moment, subject to further revision, might be described as a moment of lived experience that encapsulates multiple layers of meaning and reverberates through one's life like the sounding of a bell in the dark.


My work is diverse, though frequently based in performance, it also moves into visual art, film, photography and writing. Working back and forth across these different media offers the opportunity to view ideas from different perspectives, that approach or diverge from truth or fiction.
In performance work my interest is in the triadic relationship between artist, audience and the work and the permeable boundaries between them. I hold to the idea that all art is performance and that the act of viewing, or listening, is no less performative. In each work there is an event unfolding, with all its’ implications, and an exploration of this triadic encounter.

At the centre of recent work has been an interest in fiction and the ways in which fiction can be as revealing of the truth as truth itself. I frequently work with appropriated images. This abuse of art history opens up a reflexive form of meaning- making which calls into question the notion of truth in relation to personal and collective histories.