ARTIST BIOGRAPHIES

Peter Atkins
Australian, born 1963

Peter Atkins uses an extraordinary range of visual signs and symbols drawn from popular culture, industrial design and the applied arts as source material for his paintings. The mapping of collected material derived from his personal interaction with the urban landscape is fundamental to his process and practice. Atkins is fascinated by the idea that abstract elements exist often in prosaic form within the urban environment. His most recent work has developed from his experience of Los Angeles and draws on reference material he collected there including store signage, real estate and sale signs, window forms, patterns on trucks and buses, book jackets, record covers and architectural elements.

Peter Atkins was born in Murrurundi, New South Wales in 1963. He studied painting in 1983-84 in Newcastle and completed final year painting at the National Art School in Sydney in 1985.  Atkins has exhibited regularly since 1986 and in 1994 represented Australia at the VIII Triennale – India, where he was awarded the gold medal. Atkins has exhibited in Australia, France, Taiwan, Korea, Japan, Italy and Spain. He was awarded an Australia Council Studio residency in Barcelona in 1998 and Los Angeles in 2008.

In 2003-04 Atkins was the subject of a survey exhibition Big paintings, 1990-2003, which toured regional galleries in Australia.  Atkins has participated in over fifty group exhibitions, including Home sweet home: works from the Peter Fay Collection (2003) and Uncommon world: aspects of contemporary Australian art (2000), both at the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; and MCA unpacked II at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney (2003). He was represented four times in the Moet et Chandon touring exhibition (1990, 1992, 1995, 1996). In 2008 he was the recipient of the ‘Signature of ‘M’ Award’, Melbourne. Peter Atkins lives and works in Melbourne. 
 

Vivienne Binns
Australian, born 1940

Over a career spanning more than four decades, Vivienne Binns has addressed the questions of what it is to be an artist, and how meanings are transformed by different ideologies, styles and interpretations through her art. She has experimented with a range of artistic practices including painting, assemblage, performance and craft. Binns has also worked as a teacher and innovative community artist developing a vigorous engagement with the materiality and philosophical meanings of local, national and regional culture. From the late 1990s, her work has centred on an investigation of the effects of cross-cultural encounters. 

Vivienne Binns was born in Wyong, New South Wales in 1940.  She currently lives and works in Canberra. In 1962 she completed a Diploma in Painting and Drawing at the National Art School, Sydney and in 1982 took part in an Artist in Community Training Program in Bowral, New South Wales. Binns has held a number of important solo exhibitions since the early 1970s and her works have featured in a range of significant group exhibitions including Superspective at the Canberra Contemporary Art Space, Canberra in 2005; Surface indicators at the ANU School of Art, Canberra in 2004; On the Brink: Abstraction in the 90s at Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne in 2000; I Had a Dream: Australian Art in the 1960s at the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne in 1997; Frames of Reference: Aspects of Feminism and Art at Pier 4/5, Sydney in 1991. In 1982 her work was included in the Biennale of Sydney at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Most recently, she was the subject of a major solo exhibition at the Tasmania Museum and Art Gallery which toured to The Drill Hall Gallery, Canberra, the Penrith Regional Gallery and the Bathurst Regional Gallery in 2007.

In 2000 Binns undertook an Australia Council Artist in Residence, visiting England, Ireland, Scotland and France.  In 2001 she was awarded an ANU FRGS Grant and travelled to London, Venice and Paris to carry out research relating to artists of the Cook voyages in the eighteenth century.  In 2008 Binns was nominated as a finalist for the McCaughey Prize at the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne. Binns has also received the Order of Australia Medal for contribution to art, craft and community; the Ros Bower Memorial Award and the Australian Artists Creative Fellowship. Her work is held in major museums and collections throughout Australia.
 

Stephen Bush
Australian, born 1958

Since the 1980s, Stephen Bush’s paintings have shifted through several transitions and styles ranging from figurative realism to lurid abstraction. His paintings have generally focused on the depiction of landscapes that in some way describe human occupation and dominance over the land. His early landscape paintings reflected his interest in the American painters of the mid 19th century Hudson River School and their images of the grandeur of the landscape. Bush’s recent paintings are characterised by intensely bright colours and a convergence of multiple spatial perspectives which evoke the instability and constant flux of the world.

Stephen Bush graduated from Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in 1978 and since then has exhibited widely in Australia and internationally. His first solo exhibition was held in Melbourne in 1984 and in that year he undertook a study tour of the United States. In 1987 he received the Hugh Williamson commission from the National Gallery of Victoria. Bush has exhibited widely in Australia since the 1980s and more recently, has exhibited in Europe and the United States. In 2003 he was the subject of a major survey exhibition Blackwood Skyline at The Ian Potter Museum of Art at the University of Melbourne. Bush has been the recipient of numerous awards and grants, including an Arts Victoria International Program Grant in 1999; a studio residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris, in 1993; and project grants through the Visual arts/Craft Board of the Australia Council in both 1988 and 1997. Stephen Bush lives and works in Melbourne. His work is represented in many public collections in Australia and private collections in both Australia and the United States.

Destiny Deacon
Kuku/Erub/Mer, born 1957

Destiny Deacon was born in 1957 in Maryborough, Queensland of the KuKu and Erub/Mer peoples. She trained as a teacher in Melbourne and since 1987 has been a radio broadcaster on 3CR’s program Not another Koori show. She has also worked as a performer, writer and video-maker. Deacon held her first one person photographic exhibition, Pitcha Mi Koori as part of the Melbourne Fringe Festival in 1990. The following year her work was included in the Aboriginal Women’s Exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney and, in 1993, was selected by that institution for inclusion in Australian Perspecta. In 1993, Deacon also held a joint exhibition (with Brenda Croft) at the Australian Centre for Photography, Sydney.

Her photographs have also been shown as part of several international exhibitions including Tyerabarrbowaryaou 2 at the 5th Havana Biennale, Cuba in 1994 and Mistaken Identities: Africus — the First Johannesburg Biennale the following year. In 1995 she held the exhibition Welcome to the Never Never at Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi, Melbourne. The following year Deacon held a one-person exhibition at the Australian Centre for Photography, Sydney and her photographs were included in the second Asia-Pacific Triennial at the Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane and Photography is Dead. Long Live Photography! at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney. In 1996 and 1997 she held solo exhibitions at Gallery Gabrielle Pizzi, Melbourne. In 2005, she had a solo exhibition

• Media releases for this exhibition
• View Images for this exhibition