Vivien Gaston

Vivien Gaston is a Melbourne/Naarm-based figurative painter reinterpreting the sublime and the mythic. She sources images from observation, past artists, cinema and photography and transforms interior psychologies in dialogue with the history of art. The natural world is seen as both fragile and enduring and accessed by humans only through a sublime vision. In landscape, portraits and narrative subjects she explores the material qualities of painting and drawing and the abstract resonance of light and space. She was a finalist in the Doug Moran National Portrait Prize, Juniper Gallery, Sydney, 2022, and the Rick Amor Drawing Prize, McClelland Gallery, Langwarrin, 2024.

Her painting is informed by her research as a recognised curator and writer, having published widely and curated several highly regarded exhibitions at major galleries, including the National Gallery of Victoria.

Waterfalls

Vivien Gaston’s most recent solo exhibition, Waterfalls, is at Faux Gallery, 267 Lygon Street Brunswick, Australia from 18 October - 24 November 2024.

‘Vivien Gaston’s waterfalls are landscapes of the mind as much as they are beautifully—and sometimes recognisably topographic. She balances the psychological with the physical in this recent series of resonant paintings, evoking Earth’s deep time and the forces of nature on which all life depends. In a time of environmental crisis, human identification with the sublime power of water seems more urgent than ever before.’

— Jane Clark, Senior Research Curator, Mona (The Museum of Old and New Art), Hobart