Vivienne Binns facts for kids

Vivienne Joyce Binns OAM (born 1940) is a famous Australian artist. She is known for her important role in the Women's Art Movement in Australia. Vivienne also uses her art to explore ideas about feminism, which is about equal rights for women. She is also a strong supporter of community arts, which means making art available to everyone. Vivienne mostly creates paintings.

Vivienne Binns' Early Life

Vivienne Binns was born in Wyong, New South Wales, Australia, in 1940. She was the youngest of five children. Her father was in the army for five years, serving in the Middle East and Papua New Guinea. During this time, Vivienne, her mother, and siblings lived in Young, New South Wales.

After the war ended in 1945, her family moved back to Sydney. Vivienne grew up there, first in Willoughby and then Wollstonecraft.

From 1953, Vivienne went to North Sydney Girls High School. She then studied art at the National Art School from 1958 to 1962. After she finished her studies, Vivienne stayed at the school and became a teacher in the drawing department.

Vivienne Binns' Art Career

Vivienne Binns had her first art show called Vivienne Binns: Paintings and Constructions in Sydney in 1967. Some people really disliked her work at first. They used strong words to describe it, like "shocking" or "disturbing." One art critic even said her work "challenged masculinity."

After this show, Vivienne decided to take a break from painting. She became very involved in something called "community arts." In 1973, she worked for the Community Arts Program, which was a project by the Australia Council for the Arts. Her job was to visit different areas and find out what people needed and what art resources were available. She did a lot to help and promote art in communities. She also started working with materials like vitreous enamel, which were often seen as "crafts" rather than fine art.

In 1975, she met and became friends with Lucy Lippard, a feminist art critic from the US. Vivienne later visited New York City and connected with the women's art movement there.

From 1979, Vivienne started programs where she was an "artist-in-residence" at the University of New South Wales. This meant she worked as an artist in different communities across New South Wales from 1980 to 1988.

In the late 1980s, Vivienne taught painting and drawing at the University of Sydney Art Workshop. In 1994, she taught at Charles Sturt University in Albury. She then moved to Canberra to teach at the Canberra School of Art.

In 1990, Vivienne traveled to central Australia. There, she learned about the Dreamtime stories, art, and culture from Pitjantjara women. In the same year, she received an Australian Arts Creative Fellowship. This award allowed her to spend three years researching the cultural links between Australia and the Asia-Pacific region.

In 1991, Vivienne lived in Tokyo for a time as part of an Australia Council residency. She also attended three South Pacific Festivals of the Arts in Rarotonga (1992), Western Samoa (1996), and Noumea (2000). These experiences led to many new artworks. Her art began to include references to Captain James Cook and the artists who traveled with him. She also started using patterns from tapa cloth, which is a traditional bark cloth from the Pacific islands.

In 1995, she began a large series of artworks called In Memory of the Unknown Artist. This project celebrates the artistic efforts of people who are not usually called "artists." This includes designers of fabrics, linoleum, carpets, and tiles. It also honors housewives, traditional craftspeople, street artists, and people who do art as a hobby. She continued this series into the 2000s.

In 2000, she was an artist-in-residence in London. In 2001, she visited Europe again with help from a grant.

In 2002, Vivienne traveled to the Kimberleys in Australia. After this trip, her art started to include images of that landscape. Sometimes she mixed these with Cook-related images and patterned surfaces. In 2003, she worked with other artists, Geoff Newton and Derek O'Connor, on a series of paintings.

Vivienne retired from teaching in 2012.

In 2018, she had a solo exhibition called It Is What It Is in Melbourne.

In 2019, Vivienne Binns was interviewed for a special project by the State Library of Queensland. In this interview, she talked about her life, her art, and what inspires her.

As of March 2022, Vivienne Binns, who is 81 years old, still works and paints in her studio. She works at a slower pace now, sometimes taking a long time to finish a painting.

A big exhibition of her work, called Vivienne Binns: On and through the Surface, opened in February 2022 at MUMA (Monash University Museum of Art) in Melbourne. It then moved to the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia in Sydney in July. This exhibition includes more than 100 of her artworks, such as prints, sculptures, drawings, and her very first paintings.

Vivienne Binns' Art Practice

Vivienne Binns has worked with many different types of art. These include painting, printmaking, performance art, sculpture, and drawing. Her wide range of artistic work has earned her a lot of respect among other artists in Australia and around the world, especially within the feminist art community.

Painting Style

Throughout her career, Vivienne Binns has become very well known for her painting. Her first solo exhibition, Vivienne Binns: Paintings and Constructions, was held in 1967.

Over many years, Vivienne has experimented with colors and shapes. Through her paintings, she has explored big ideas like feminism and looking at history from different points of view. Vivienne uses abstraction in her art. This means she uses shapes, colors, and lines instead of realistic pictures to show complex ideas. This helps make her ideas understandable to more people.

The Women's Art Movement

Vivienne Binns was a key figure in starting The Women's Art Movement (WAM) in Sydney. This movement began in 1973. It was inspired by an essay called "Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?" by Linda Nochlin.

WAM wanted to fight against unfair treatment and sexism in the art world. They did this through various actions and art shows. Vivienne was one of the founding members in 1974. WAM was especially focused on keeping records of women's artwork through the Women's Art Register.

Community Art Projects

Vivienne Binns played a big part in developing community arts in Australia. In 1972, she worked with Mike Morris and Tim Burns on The Artsmobile. This was a traveling community art project. It brought fun, performance-based art to towns along the north-east coast of New South Wales. The Artsmobile brought many art activities to schools, senior centers, and public parks.

Continuing her interest in community arts, Vivienne created Mothers' Memories, Others' Memories in 1978. This project started during her time as an artist-in-residence at the University of New South Wales. She later expanded the project to the Sydney suburb of Blacktown.

Mothers' Memories, Others' Memories focused on "the lives of women and how they expressed themselves in their homes." It created a space where people could share stories about the craft and needlework skills they learned from their mothers and other family members. The final artwork was shown as a series of postcards. This project continued until 1981.

In 1983, Vivienne started her next big community art project called Full Flight. She traveled and lived in a caravan for two years in the Central West region of New South Wales. She stayed in each town for two to four months. During this time, she led workshops, painted murals, and shared art skills. This project celebrated "the creativity of everyday people."

Vivienne's interest in community arts came from her desire to make the art world open to everyone, not just those involved in art institutions.

In 1989, Vivienne began another community art project called The Tower of Babel at the Watters Gallery. It started with 50 small dioramas (miniature scenes). These were made by Vivienne, her friends, mentors, students, and other artists. The project is still ongoing as of 2022, and now includes 90 boxes.

In 1991, Vivienne Binns was the main editor of a book called Community and the Arts: History, Theory, Practice. This book was a guide for people working in community arts.

Awards and Recognition

The Australia Council has said that Vivienne Binns was one of the first artists in Australia to seriously explore feminism in her art. She also helped start conversations between Australian art and international feminist ideas.

In 1983, Vivienne was given an Order of Australia Medal for her contributions to art and craft. She also received the Ros Bower Memorial Award in 1985 for her amazing work in Community Arts.

In 1990, she was awarded an Australian Arts Creative Fellowship. This award helped her fund a three-year research project about the cultural connections between Australia and the Asia-Pacific region.

Her work was chosen for important art prizes like the John McCaughey Memorial Prize (2008) and the Clemenger Contemporary Art Award (2009) at the National Gallery of Victoria.

In 2021, Vivienne Binns received an Australia Council Award for Visual Arts.

Exhibitions

Vivienne Binns has been part of many art exhibitions over more than fifty years.

Solo Exhibitions

• 1967 Paintings and Constructions, Watters Gallery, Sydney
• 1971 Funky Enamel Ashtrays, Watters Gallery, Sydney
• 1973 Enamel Panels, University of Tasmania, Hobart and Raffins Gallery, Orange, New South Wales
• 1985 Watters Gallery, Sydney
• 1990 Drawings of God, Tower of Babel, Bellas Gallery, Brisbane
• 1992 Sutton Gallery, Melbourne
• 1994 Surfacing in the Pacific, Bellas Gallery, Brisbane
• 1995 Pacific Strands, Australian Girls' Own Gallery (aGOG), Canberra
• 1996 Slicing History in the Pacific, Bellas Gallery, Brisbane
• 1996 In Memory of the Unknown Artist and Others, Watters Gallery, Sydney
• 1999 PATTERNING: In Memory of Unknown Artists, Sutton Gallery, Melbourne
• 1999 TRANSLATIONS: Remembering Unknown Artists, Bellas Gallery, Brisbane
• 1999 Rocks and Relics: Cook to Lake Cargelligo, The Cube, Canberra Contemporary Art Space, Canberra
• 2004 Vivienne Binns: Twenty First Century Paintings, curated by Merryn Gates, The Cross Art Projects, Sydney
• 2005 Some New, Some Old, Some Collaborations, Sutton Gallery, Melbourne
• 2006-8 Vivienne Binns, touring exhibition curated by Merryn Gates, Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart; The Drill Hall Gallery, Australian National University, Canberra; Penrith Regional Gallery, Penrith, NSW; and Bathurst Regional Gallery, Bathurst, NSW
• 2008 Everything New is Old Again, Sutton Gallery, Melbourne
• 2012 Vivienne Binns, Art and Life (mini –Survey), curated by Penny Peckham, La Trobe University Museum of Art, Melbourne
• 2018 It is what it is what it is, Sutton Gallery, Melbourne
• 2022 Vivienne Binns: On and through the Surface, MUMA, Melbourne, then Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney

Group Exhibitions

• 1971 Woom, environmental lightshow with Roger Foley (Ellis D Fogg), Watters Gallery, Sydney
• 1972 The Jo Bonomo Story - A Show of Strength, a group happening, Watters Gallery, Sydney
• 1978 An exhibition of work by homosexual and lesbian artists, Watters Gallery, Sydney
• 1980 Mothers' Memories, Others' Memories, Blacktown artist in community and participation project, Watters Gallery, Sydney; Ewing and George Paton Galleries, University of Melbourne, Melbourne
• 1981 Australian Perspecta, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney
• 1981-83 Full-Flight, artist-in-community in the central western region of NSW
• 1982 Biennale of Sydney, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney
• 1987 Contemporary Art in Australia A Review, Museum of Contemporary Art, South Brisbane
• 1991 Frames of Reference: Aspects of Feminism and Art, Pier 4/5, Sydney
• 1996 Women Hold Up Half the Sky: The Orientation of Art in the Post-War Pacific, MUMA, Melbourne
• 1997 I had a Dream: Australian Art in the 1960s, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
• 1998 Patterning: Layers of Meaning in Contemporary Art, curated by Merryn Gates, touring to Canberra; Bandung, Jakarta, Ubud, Yogyakarta, Indonesia; Lahore, Pakistan; and Manila, Philippines
• 2000 On the Brink: Abstraction in the 90’s, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne
• 2007 Cross Currents: Focus on Contemporary Australian Art, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney
• 2012 Sixties Explosion, Macquarie University Art Gallery, Sydney
• 2014 Binns + Valamanesh, Casula Powerhouse, Sydney
• 2015 Pop to Popism, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney
• 2017-18 Unfinished Business: Perspectives on Art & Feminism, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne

Major Art Collections

Vivienne Binns' artwork is held in many private collections and major public collections, including:

• Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney
• Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth
• Australian National University, Canberra
• BHP, Melbourne
• Canberra Museum and Gallery, Canberra
• Griffith University Art Collection, Queensland
• Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne.
• Kohlberg Kravis Roberts
• Monash University Museum of Art (MUMA), Melbourne
• National Gallery of Australia, Canberra
• National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
• Newcastle Art Gallery, Newcastle, New South Wales
• Parliament House Art Collection, Canberra
• Perc Tucker Regional Gallery, Townsville, Queensland
• Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane
• University Art Gallery, Queensland University, Brisbane
• University of Western Australia, Cruthers Collection of Women's Art
• Wesfarmers, Perth