Meet the Australian artist whose work was called ‘an affront to masculinity’

Vivienne Binns' work is a bold and confident rebuttal to the male gaze and male entitlement, writes Julie Shiels.

In 1967, Vivienne Binns blasted onto the art scene with her Vag Dens and Phallic Monuments work at Watters Gallery, Sydney.

On entering MUMA, we are blasted by the visual power of her paintings that employed Surrealist, Dadaist and graphic styles to address gender, sexuality and portraiture.

Binns has innovated in overlapping fields of community, collaborative, feminist and conceptually based art since the late 1960s, an era that reevaluated womanhood and sexuality.

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