top of page
abstract figurative painter self portrait woman artist New Zealand portraiture nz painting feminist artwork viky garden nude sculpture sculptor studio menopause female contemporary figure face faces portraits portray portrayal figures expressive brooding moody contemplative human condition menopausal depression depressed abstraction art

NEW STUDIO WORK - VIKY GARDEN  - View here​ 
Fe29 Gallery, June 2024

Viky Garden presents a troika of exhibitions within her current display at Fe29.​

The bulk of her works are a series of new paintings, many of them her trademark otherworldly portraits, heavily painted pieces in which women's faces loom from a mist of texture and pattern. The faces stare, not with composure...more

 

PORTRAYAL OF THE HUMAN FORM - VIKY GARDEN & EDWARD POVEY  - View here​ 

Fe29 Gallery, December 2022

Fe29 Gallery’s latest exhibition, "Portrayal of Human Form", is somewhat deceptively listed as featuring the works of Viky Garden and Edward Povey...more

AUTUMN COLLECTION  - View here​ 

Fe29 Gallery, April 2022​

Fe29's "Autumn Collection" is an opportunity to combine an overview of work by the gallery's regular artists with previously unseen pieces by Viky Garden and John Drawbridge...more

GRIT  - View here​  

Fe29 Gallery, June 2021

In ‘‘Grit’’, Garden explores the mental and physical states accompanying menopause, using her self-images as a tool to examine its accompanying psychological, emotional and sexual changes...more

VIKY GARDEN PAINTINGS  - View here​ 

Fe29 Gallery, June 2019

Hard on the heels of an exhibition of Viky Garden’s pinhole photography, Fe29 Gallery now presents some of the artist’s better-known work: her strong, introspective paintings and monotypes....more

CASTING SHADOWS  - View here​ 

Fe29 Gallery, May 2019

Viky Garden's art is being shown in two consecutive exhibitions at Fe29. The second, starting at the beginning of June, focuses on her paintings, but in the current display it is the artist's pinhole photography which takes pride of place...more

SAY IT TO MY FACE  - View here​ 

Warwick Henderson Gallery, August 2018

As a respected artist who rarely publicly displays her work, a new exhibition by Viky Garden is a delightful treat....more

SEVEN MOODS OF VIKY GARDEN - View here​ 

Warwick Henderson Gallery, September 2016

...Paintings by Garden are rare. She seldom shows her work, perhaps because, throughout her long career, she has concentrated, to an unusual degree, on self-portraits in a variety of moods and settings. These are generally domestic and she sees herself as Everywoman....more

ADAM PORTRAITURE EXHIBITION 
James Wallace Trust, Pah Homestead, August 2014

As a gallery of New Zealand faces evoked by an established award, it is well worth a visit...more 

AUTUMN GROUP EXHIBITION 
Warwick Henderson Gallery, May 2014

Viky Garden’s new work, featuring in the Autumn Exhibition at Warwick Henderson Gallery, comes hot on the trail of her recent success in the USA...more

PASSENGERS - View here​  
Warwick Henderson Gallery, November 2009

These thoughtful works could be melodramatic but although the images are far from sentimental they have a highly individual charm...more  

NEW WORLD VIRTUES - View here​  
Warwick Henderson Gallery, August 2008

It is typical of the work of Viky Garden that the phone is linked to adolescent females as a source of pressure. Her show at the Warwick Henderson Gallery is intensely personal. It is also toughly unsentimental as it makes memorable images from the way a naïve young woman comes to terms with the world...more

ARABESQUES - View here​ 
Edmiston Duke Gallery, 2006

Garden's self-portraits reveal a variety of moods and attitudes and achieve their remarkable presence by her unusual combination of expressive glance, baroque patterning and the audacity to be a little grotesque while preserving dignity...more

FEMME-BRIDAL SUITE - View here​ 
Edmiston Duke Gallery, 2005

Not so high-flying, also reliant on withdrawal, but much more humanistic is the touching little exhibition called femme - bridal suite by Viky Garden at the Edmiston Duke Gallery until September 23...more  

BASELINES - View here​ 
Judith Anderson Gallery, September 2004

Garden combines tight construction with individual style and/psychological penetration...more

ANY GIVEN DAY - View here​ 
Judith Anderson Gallery, November 2002

Symbols are all very well but they must be given an effective visual presence and Garden's figures have an extraordinary force as they act out their part in wide landscape settings...more 

AUCKLAND - A WORK OF FICTION - View here​ 
Judith Anderson Gallery, February 2002

Viky Garden's work at the Judith Anderson Gallery (until February 23) is not a narrative but a series of autobiographical feelings. In her paintings she uses a tall, female figure who is obviously the artist herself but also stands as an emblem or metaphor. The images are solemn and intent...more

HERE, AFTER - View here​ 
Peters Muir Petford Gallery, October 2000

The artist is best known for her portrayal of young women in emblematic roles. In this show she is portraying objects rather than people, although one of the remarkable qualities of the work is the suggestion of people among the objects that help to make up their lives...more

CONTRA-INDICATIONS - View here​ 
Peters Muir Petford Gallery, September 1999

The paintings as a group have an astringency set by the acerbic face of the woman and the tension between subject and object, between the cradled vase and the nearby statue of motherhood, between the perilous poise of the vase and a bare tree out a window or a faded rose on a table...more

OFFICE WIVES - View here​ 

Chiaroscuro Gallery, November 1997

What is the secret that makes Viky Garden popular enough to sell well, and yet keep an undeniable intellectual strength? The answer is many layered...more

OFFICE WIVES - Women of Modern Substance

Chiaroscuro Gallery, November 1997 

Vermeer lovers take note. If you are, like me, susceptible to the hypnotic world of the Dutch paintings, where serene women in starched linen bodices are caught attending to timeless interior rituals, Viky Garden's Office Wives may take your breath away...more

SISTERS OF MERCY - View here​ 
Chiaroscuro Gallery, August 1996

In the sell-out exhibition, Sisters of Mercy by Viky Garden at the Chiaroscuro Gallery, some of the most striking paintings have in the background agitated pieces of linen swept by turbulent breezes...more

A THIN DISGUISE - View here​ 
Chiaroscuro Gallery, August 1995

This witty, astringent, idiosyncratic show is sharp and unsentimental and in its own way full of delightful, intriguing painting...more  

TRUE LIFE STUDIES - View here​ 
Chiaroscuro Gallery, August 1994

An evaluation of Garden's work like this would not be possible if the work itself was not of a high standard. Garden has a talent with the brush and an eye for colour where the shades and tones of the body are a subtle decorative patterning like the bruises on an apple...more

VIKY GARDEN PAINTINGS

Auckland Society of Arts, 1989

In the last little gallery there is a very bright exhibition by Vicky Garden, whose paintings have strong unusual design elements and very individual colour schemes and make good use of the texture of the hessian on which they are done. TJ McNamara, NZ Herald 1989



 

bottom of page