Vivian Lynn

Vivian Isabella Lynn (née Robertson; 30 November 1931 – 1 December 2018) was a New Zealand artist.

Education Lynn was born in Wellington in 1931 and attended Wellington Girls' College from 1945 to 1948. She completed a Diploma of Fine Arts at the School of Fine Arts at Canterbury University College majoring in painting in 1952, and a Diploma of Teaching at Auckland Teachers' Training College in 1954. At art school her lecturers included Rata Lovell-Smith, Bill Sutton and Russell Clark. According to Lynn, the curriculum was focused on the history of Western art, with little attention given to New Zealand or contemporary art, although she did meet artists such as Colin McCahon, Toss Woollaston, Doris Lusk and Rita Angus and see their work in The Group exhibitions.

Lynn was featured in a special issue of the New Zealand feminist magazine Broadsheet published in 1983, focused on feminist art. In an interview Lynn discussed how during World War II she had seen both her parents working in jobs, raising their children and sharing family chores.

In 1972, Lynn spent a year in the United States, where she developed her interest in printmaking; throughout the 1970s she worked with this medium, producing works such as Book of Forty Images (1973–1974) and Playground,, which explore 'the reasons behind women's social and political oppression'.

Between 1977 and 1979, Lynn produced a series of works on paper, now held in the Christchurch Art Gallery, in which she reworked drawings and life studies made at art school, in a comment on 'the sexual politics of the Western art historical tradition'. Each piece is titled to reflect cultural stages of a female life: Matrix; Daughter of the father; Sacrifice; Processual ground; Differentiation; Rebirth and Eyes of life, eyes of death. Lynn said, "In my hair pieces of 1982 I have come closer to the toxic object image I need. I want a toxic image that physically shocks – the conscious levels are split open – not the safe anchorage." Lynn's contribution to the 1982 Wellington sculpture festival F1 Sculpture Project Mantle, was an installation based around a rectangular construction made up of hair collected over several weeks from local hair salons. Another work using hair, Stain, which gives the illusion of a stream of human hair trickling down the cathedral's marble steps, was installed for the 'New Art in Dunedin' project in 1984.

Art historian Priscilla Pitts notes that 'Lynn frequently sought equivalents or proxies for the female body, and this led to a particularly inventive use of materials'. In Guarden Gates, in one work, she set up a frisson by including a small amount of processed animal tissue as a metaphor for the human body. In Lamella/Lamina (1983), a sculptural installation of 15 fragile columns, Lynn used architectural drawing paper processed to create texture, the work itself being installed at Anzart in Hobart in response to threatened rain forest on the Franklin River. The artist said that the columns were, amongst other things, 'a metaphor for vulnerability, sensitivity, and how one toughens up as one gets older ... Lamella/Lamina reflects the layering and interconnectedness, of nature and culture, of skin surface, mind and the political.' The work brings together many of Lynn's concerns particularly healing the abject as in the 1982 work Mantle. By recovering destroyed and damaged tapa, drawing attention to the low status (craft) assigned to women's production and by analogy to reproduction Lynn creates a work of simple beauty.

Between the late 1980s and 2008, Lynn worked with her own DNA imagery in Drawing Connections and her interest in the mind and brain with Rorschach imagery titled Your Mental Set and Mind Field. In 1997 her large installation, showing nine images of her brain, titled Spin: versor versa was shown at City Gallery, Wellington.

A survey exhibition of Lynn’s work titled I, HERE, NOW: Vivian Lynn, curated by Christina Barton, was held at the Adam Art Gallery at Victoria University of Wellington in 2008–09.

Lynn's work is held in public collections throughout New Zealand, including Auckland Art Gallery, the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa and Christchurch Art Gallery.

Senior Curator at the Dowse Art Museum Melanie Oliver had this to say about her:"Vivian's practice was wide-ranging and spanned many significant developments in art in Aotearoa New Zealand. She forged a unique pathway, posing questions around the nature/culture discourse, ecology, identity, a repressed feminine and dominant masculine culture." Lynn was a teacher also and taught for many years at the Wellington Polytechnic School of Design (now Massey University).

Death Lynn died in Wellington following a long illness on 1 December 2018, the day after her 87th birthday.

Exhibitions

Vivian Lynn's solo exhibitions include:

1971 Vivian Lynn prints and paintings, New Vision Gallery, Auckland 1978– Taupatauma, environmental project, Colombo Street, Wellington 1982 A survey 1972–80 and new work, City Art Gallery, Wellington (now City Gallery Wellington) 1983 Twist, National Art Gallery, Wellington (now Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa) 1986 The Goddess gateway: a southern crossing attended by the goddess, Govett Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth 1986 Vivian Lynn – Caryatid, Installation project 2, City Art Gallery, Wellington 1993 Vivian Lynn: Guarden gates and related works, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa 1997 Spin: versor versari, City Gallery Wellington 1999 Mantles, maladies, mutations and Prussian blue, Manawatu Art Gallery, Palmerston North (now Te Manawa) 2008 I, HERE, NOW Vivian Lynn, Adam Art Gallery, Wellington

Group exhibitions in which Lynn has participated include: