Vivienne Binns and her Feminist Lineages

Since the beginnings of her career, Vivienne Binns has tested the philosophical underpinnings of art itself, both pre-empting and participating in the most significant cultural discourses of our times: from women’s social and sexual liberation to Australia’s regional identity. Hannah Mathews (MUMA), co-curator of Vivienne Binns: On and through the Surface, will examine the significance of Binns’s feminist lineages with artist Lisa Radford, including Binns’s commitment to collaborative and community practices and the ongoing influence of her sustained painting practice on subsequent generations.

Vivienne Binns: On and through the Surface is at MUMA to 14 April 2022.

Dr Lisa Radford explores the shared socio-political space between images, place and people. More often than not she works with others, most recently with Sam George and Yhonnie Scarce. Emerging from the discipline of painting, her practice traverses writing, performance, sculpture and installation. In late 2016, she presented Dear Masato, all at once (get a life, the only thing that cuts across the species is death) at West Space as part of their annual commission series. Other recent exhibitions have included Painting. More Painting at ACCA (2016) and Approx. Geez Louise, Sutton Projects (both Melbourne) and the 3rd Ural Industrial Biennial of Contemporary Art, Russia, as part of Footnotes—a collaborative project with Liang Luscombe and 3-Ply publishing (Fayen d’Evie), both in 2015. Between 1999 and 2010, she was a participant in the collaborative art group DAMP. Lisa currently works in the painting department at the Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne, and shares thoughts publicly and intermittently in The Saturday Paper.

Hannah Mathews is Senior Curator at MUMA.