Vivienne Binns: On and through the Surface

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.

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; an illustrated list of works; and historic interviews and texts with and by the artist. Design by Stuart Geddes and Žiga Testen.

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280 pages, softcover, 33.5 x 24 x 3 cm
Texts: Merryn Gates, Helen Hughes, Terence Maloon, Kyla McFarlane, Penny Peckham, Quentin Sprague, Gemma Weston
Foreword: Charlotte Day and Elizabeth Ann Macgregor
Editors: Anneke Jaspers and Hannah Mathews
Coordinating editor: Melissa Ratliff
Design: Stuart Geddes and Žiga Testen
Edition: First edition of 1,000
Year: 2022
ISBN: 978-0-6481529-9-6
Published by: Monash University Museum of Art, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia and Powered by Power
Distribution: NewSouth Books (Australia and New Zealand) Turnaround (United Kingdom and Europe) and University Washington Press (United States).

The publication was supported by the Copyright Agency’s Cultural Fund and by Creative Partnerships Australia through the Australian Cultural Fund.

Publication photography courtesy of Perimeter Editions