Vivienne Binns, On and through the Surface

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 recognised in 2021 with an Australia Council Award for Visual Arts.

"Binns is one of those artists that Australian art history can’t really handle—her work, her professional career, her personal biography, is too polymorphous for us. This show has a hefty catalogue with five provocative essays, which together do an extraordinary job of coming to terms with Binns. But, nevertheless, a central section of over 150 pages of illustrations, a selection of vintage interviews and a forensic biography by researcher Penny Peckham is also required to explain the artist’s lush malleability."
– Victoria Perin in Vivienne Binns: On and Through the Surface, MeMO Review

"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 in Artist Vivienne Binns, The Saturday Paper