Vivienne Binns

Vivienne Binns was born in Australia in 1940, trained as a painter at the National Art School in Sydney but has worked in many media and processes.

She was awarded the Order of Australia Medal (service to the Arts and Craft) 1983; the Ros Bower Memorial Award, Community Arts, 1985 and an Australian Artists Creative Fellowship in 1990. For a major part of her career she exhibited in an important and constructive relationship with Watters Gallery, Sydney. She is currently represented by Bellas Gallery, Brisbane; Sutton Gallery, Melbourne, and Helen Maxwell Gallery in Canberra. Her work is held in major museums and collections throughout Australia.

Her first one person exhibition in 1967 at Watters, attracted strong critical reaction because of its powerful imagery and sexual symbolism unexpected at that time from a young woman. Some works became icons in Australian art forecasting feminist influence in the 1970's.

During the 1970's she worked in vitreous enamel, was active in the crafts and helped found the Women's Art Movement in Sydney. She fought for improvements for women artists and conditions in the arts generally.

From 1972 she evolved an art practice in city, suburban and rural communities throughout Australia. "Mothers' Memories Others' Memories", (!979 to 1981) was a project about women's lives and creative activity. In the project "Full Flight" (1981-3) Vivienne lived and worked from a caravan in rural areas in New South Wales.

Having been absorbed in the many aspects of cultural expression within Australia, Vivienne in 1984 turned her gaze to the geophysical region of which it was part.In 1991 she was resident in the Australia Council studio in Tokyo and has attended Pacific Arts Festivals in the Cook Islands, Samoa and New Caledonia. Her trips to the Pacific have alternated with research in Europe.

In 2000 she was resident in the Australia Council Studio London and in 2001 again visited Europe assisted by an ANU Faculties Research Grant. This made it possible to pursue two aspects of her work. To continue research into Captain James Cooks journeys and the work of artists who traveled with him and to seek out contemporary work with a particular focus on surfacing and abstraction.

The results of her years developing art practice actively engaged with different communities in Australia, are reflected in a series of works called “In Memory of the Unknown Artist”. Vivienne’s studio work combines numbers of strands in sometimes unexpected ways. Essentially she explores what it means to be an artist today, in Australia, with personal, local and European histories, engaging with cultures in the Asia Pacific Region. Most of her work for the last ten years has been studio based painting.

She lives in Canberra ACT and is Head of Core Studies at the ANU NITA School of Art.