Ben Apfelbaum

VIVIENNE BINNS : ON AND THROUGH THE SURFACE @ MCA

 

Archetype in Cornwall
Harriet, Laura & Joyce
Kite
Lino, Canberra
Orange flam
Parkinson & lino
Self portrait, self image
Surfacing space
Termound
Topographica

Tracing 60 years of work by one of Australia’s most significant feminist artists, VIVIENNE BINNS : ON AND THROUGH THE SURFACE is the first retrospective dedicated to the artist.

Curated by Anneke Jaspers (Senior Curator, Collection, MCA) and Hannah Mathews (Senior Curator, MUMA), this major survey exhibition brings together over one hundred art works on loan from public and private collections and from the artist’s collection.

Vivienne Binns OAM is known primarily for her process-based painting practice, though she has also worked extensively across enamel, performance, installation, and as an artist-in-community. Binns rose to prominence in the 1960s with her psychedelic depictions of sexual imagery, which marked a turning point in the history of proto-feminist art. She was a key figure in the Women’s Art Movement (WAM), notably participating in the establishment of the Woman’s Art Register.

Binns is also credited with developing community arts in Australia, following a series of landmark collaborative projects in the 1970s and 1980s that aimed to increase public engagement with the field of creativity. Over the last 30 years, Binns has focused on her painting practice, addressing subjects including colonial explorations in the Asia-Pacific and Australia’s cultural connections to the region, as well as formal concerns relating to pattern and surface treatment, which invoke a range of art historical lineages.

In 1983 Binns received the Order of Australia Medal (OAM) for her service to art, craft and community. In 2021, she was honoured by the Australia Council with a Visual Arts Award for lifetime achievement. Vivienne Binns is represented by Sutton Gallery, Melbourne, and Milani Gallery, Brisbane. Vivienne Binns OAM is known primarily for her process-based painting practice, though she has also worked extensively across enamel, performance, installation, and as an artist-in-community.

Binns rose to prominence in the 1960s with her psychedelic depictions of sexual imagery, which marked a turning point in the history of proto-feminist art. She was a key figure in the Women’s Art Movement (WAM), notably participating in the establishment of the Woman’s Art Register. Binns is also credited with developing community arts in Australia, following a series of landmark collaborative projects in the 1970s and 1980s that aimed to increase public engagement with the field of creativity.

Over the last 30 years, Binns has focused on her painting practice, addressing subjects including colonial explorations in the Asia-Pacific and Australia’s cultural connections to the region, as well as formal concerns relating to pattern and surface treatment, which invoke a range of art historical lineages.

In 1983 Binns received the Order of Australia Medal (OAM) for her service to art, craft and community. In 2021, she was honoured by the Australia Council with a Visual Arts Award for lifetime achievement. Vivienne Binns is represented by Sutton Gallery, Melbourne, and Milani Gallery, Brisbane.

The MCA presentation is expanded in form from the first iteration of the exhibition at MUMA earlier this year. At the MCA you will see additional artworks, with an exclusive display of archival material relating to Binns’s community-based projects, a new film commissioned by the MCA based on Binns’s process, and a current artwork-in-progress by the artist. The opening room at the MCA will give viewers a behind-the-scenes experience of Binns’s fascinating studio and artistic process.

VIVIENNE BINNS : ON AND THROUGH THE SURFACE is a partnership between the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia (MCA) in Sydney and Monash University Museum of Art (MUMA), Melbourne. The exhibition opens to the public tomorrow – June 15 – and runs until September 25, 2022. Entry is free. The exhibition is located on Galleries Level 3 Museum of Contemporary Art, 140 George Street, the Rocks.

Pics apart from featured photo by Ben Apfelbaum

Published by Ben Apfelbaum

My photography began when my father handed me the proverbial brownie box camera as a child. As cameras developed I went through Fujica and Olympus range finders graduating to my first single lens reflex camera, the Minolta SRT101, the latter being the greatest facilitator to my growth as a photographer. Digital photography has only added to this. I was a regular contributor to Camera Craft magazine (Australian Camera ) for over three years. During Australia’s Bicentennial year (1988) I made it a personal project to document the celebrations. This culminated in the creation of a book of my photos which was published in 1989. The book was called CELEBRATING AUSTRALIA and came with an accompanying calendar. My works have appeared in a number of publications including the coffee book entitled MY AUSTRALIA (1989), publisher Robertsbridge Severn. This book had a preface by the then Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke. I was a co-photographer on a book entitled SYDNEY- DISCOVER THE CITY with text written by Robert Treborlang. Major Mitchell Press was the publisher. Also for two years I was the photographer for calendars celebrating Sydney’s multicultural communities. The two calendars were entitled MULTICULTURAL SYDNEY. My work appeared in a group exhibition held at Sydney’s Town Hall pertaining to the diversity of life in South America to raise money for orphanages there. I have over one hundred photos stored in the New South Wales State Library archive. I had a solo exhibition held in 2007 entitled Ben’s Lens at the Sydney Jewish Museum which celebrated the vibrancy of the Sydney Jewish community. Some of these photos are on the Museum’s permanent display. I have exhibited internationally firstly at the Spruill Gallery in Atlanta Georgia, United States, and in an exhibition entitled Kosher and Co at the Jewish Museum in Berlin. Currently I am a regular contributor to J-Wire and this esteemed publication. To celebrate the opening of a permanent Photography Gallery, the State Library of New South Wales selected 400 shots from its archive of over 2,000,000 images to display in the new gallery. An image of mine was plucked out of the multi million photo archive to be part of the inaugural exhibition.