The Leo Kelly Blacktown Arts Centre
An innovative multi-arts hub in the heart of Blacktown City.
Mothers’ Memories, Others’ Memories is a community developed project by celebrated Australian artist Vivienne Binns OAM from 1979 to 1981 in Blacktown City.
Vivienne Binns OAM is a pioneer in the Australian feminist art movement from the late 1960s and an advocate for community artmaking. She uses multiple mediums to assert that art is for everyone and not just those who were art educated.
The project started as a residency where the artist worked with participants from Blacktown City and the University of New South Wales, to explore the lives of women and their means of creative expression.
Collecting memories through anecdotes, family photo albums, letters and diaries, participants created a collection of silk screen-printed postcards onto enamel panels.
This community project documented and honoured these stories in a way that celebrated women for who they were rather than what they were expected to be, something unusual for the time period.
Want to see the full collection of community made postcards? Visit The Leo Kelly Blacktown Arts Centre from 1 July and catch the exhibition, A Real Experience as it honours the legacy of women, artists, collectives and projects anchored to Blacktown.
We gratefully acknowledge the Blacktown Arts and Crafts Group for their support and key role in co-facilitating Mothers’ Memories, Others’ Memories.
Bio
Born 1940, Wyong, New South Wales. Lives and works in Canberra, Australian Capital Territory.
Vivienne Binns 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
This project is presented by Blacktown Arts and supported by Blacktown City Council.
