VIV, HD video, 16:9, colour, sound, 16’1”, 2022

VIV is a portrait of the Australian artist Vivienne Binns, known for her painting and feminist community art practice. The film focuses on Binns’ 1979-81 project Mothers’ Memories Others’ Memories, which took place in Blacktown in the Western Suburbs of Sydney. Community members worked to develop artworks that investigated otherwise unseen family histories – stories of their mothers and grandmothers. The film makes particular reference to the everyday details captured in Binns’ work, and the attention paid to interior and exterior spaces, private and public realms, across her paintings and in Mothers’ Memories Others’ Memories. It uses a system of visual mirroring to elucidate connections between these different parts of Binns’ practice, and draws on my friendship with Binns, to map the questions she has asked about art and its relationship to everyday life.


Screening: Vivienne Binns: On and through the Surface Exhibition Walkthrough, Performance and Discussion, Monash University Museum of Art, 2022