Vivienne Binns

Vivienne Binns is an important and singular figure in the history of Australian visual art. Her groundbreaking and experimental work has tested the philosophical underpinnings of art itself, both preempting and participating in the most significant cultural discourses of our times: from women's social and sexual liberation to Australia's regional identity.

Her outstanding, multifaceted and sustained contribution to Australian art was recognized in 2021 with an Australia Council Award for Visual Arts.

Vivienne Binns: On and Through the Surface is the first monograph on the artist's six-decade career and accompanies a major survey presented at Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne, and Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney, in 2022.

Edited by Anneke Jaspers and Hannah Mathews, the publication charts the dynamism of Binns's conceptual and material investigations with an extensive, full-colour plate section; new essays by writers and art historians Terence Maloon, Kyla McFarlane, Gemma Weston, Quentin Sprague and Helen Hughes; a 2021 interview by Merryn Gates; a detailed chronology by Penny Peckham; and historic interviews and texts with and by the artist. Design by Stuart Geddes and iga Testen.

“Leafing through the exhibition?s exquisitely designed catalogue echoes [the] sensation of memory being raked up. Action shots of Binns and her various collaborators?photographed knitting around a communal table, sketching en plein air, or painting a mural on the side of a community hall?rise off the pages. They interpolate colour plates of artworks that are now held in many of Australia?s most esteemed collections.”

"It's hard to overestimate Vivienne Binns's contributions to Australian art and to feminism. This huge book does justice, in words and images, to her long and generous career as an artist in the "high art" and the community arts contexts. Few have managed to be so outstanding in both fields. The variety is staggering, and the joy is ubiquitous."--Lucy R. Lippard

"Leafing through the exhibition's exquisitely designed catalogue echoes [the] sensation of memory being raked up. Action shots of Binns and her various collaborators--photographed knitting around a communal table, sketching en plein air, or painting a mural on the side of a community hall--rise off the pages. They interpolate colour plates of artworks that are now held in many of Australia's most esteemed collections."--Helen Hughes, The Saturday Paper

Anneke Jaspers is Senior Curator, Collection, at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia. Hannah Mathews is Senior Curator at the Monash University Museum of Art.

Vivienne Binns is an important and singular figure in the history of Australian visual art. Her groundbreaking and experimental work has tested the philosophical underpinnings of art itself, both preempting and participating in the most significant cultural discourses of our times: from women's social and sexual liberation to Australia's regional identity. Her outstanding, multifaceted and sustained contribution to Australian art was recognized in 2021 with an Australia Council Award for Visual Arts. Vivienne Binns: On and Through the Surface is the first monograph on the artist's six-decade career and accompanies a major survey presented at Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne, and Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney, in 2022. Edited by Anneke Jaspers and Hannah Mathews, the publication charts the dynamism of Binns's conceptual and material investigations with an extensive, full-colour plate section; new essays by writers and art historians Terence Maloon, Kyla McFarlane, Gemma Weston, Quentin Sprague and Helen Hughes; a 2021 interview by Merryn Gates; a detailed chronology by Penny Peckham; and historic interviews and texts with and by the artist. Design by Stuart Geddes and Ziga Testen.

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