Viky Garden, born in Wellington, currently lives in Auckland. Finalist in the NZ Adam Portrait Awards in 1992, 2014 and 2016 and in the Parkin Drawing Award in 2018, her work is held in private collections in New Zealand, Australia, UK, Canada, USA and Europe.
Garden has a consistent and focused body of work dating back 25 years. Almost exclusively using herself as the subject, she explores themes of impermanence, self-image, introspection and the female experience.
Garden’s use of shadow in a contemporary narrative – the Greek inspired silhouettes of her Passengers series (2009) and the reinvented darker nursery Nature-Nurture images (2010) – was her entrée into abstract portraiture, inviting a reconsideration of painting method and composition. In 2015 oils were replaced by liquid acrylics and brushes with bits of card, and a new approach was born.
Garden’s recent works offer a rich interplay between gestural mark-making and representation. Her lively brushstrokes simultaneously reveal and conceal the subject, achieving a fine balance that preserves their ambiguity.
The sheer concentration on her subject matter – self-portraiture – shows a remarkable discipline in Garden’s artistic practice, which is carried through to her work’s titles. Each piece is described only by the month and year in which it was completed. This choice of marking time amplifies the transitory nature of one’s self, and the inevitability of change – ideas that are both personal to the artist and universally understood, locking together the maker and the viewer.
VIKY GARDEN PAINTINGS, includes works from 2011 through to the present day, allowing us to experience this universal journey through a singular but intimate perspective.
2018-19 saw Garden expand her practice to include award-winning Photography and Monotypes. A selection of mono-types are included in the exhibition