Summary
Vivian's living experience across three countries: China, Australia and Sweden impacts her ways of seeing and making. The land you stand on shapes who you are. Her work connects the wearer to place, time and culture through materials research of rice and soil.
THE LAND YOU STAND ON SHAPES WHO YOU ARE.
Vivian has lived and studied across three countries: China, Australia and Sweden. Each culture changes her ways of seeing and making. Vivian interweaves the essence of different cultures, while exploring her roots as Chinese, through material research with rice. Wherever Vivian is situated, she observes her surroundings, collecting natural materials or everyday objects that she repeatedly encounters on her wanderings. Utilising soil, fallen leaves, flowers and grass alongside rice, which acts as a binding agent in her work, she moulds these found materials into wearable artworks. Her work connects the wearer to place, time, and culture through materials and the ancient symbolism of oracle bone script.
Vivian’s design approach is intuitive, and led by body sensation and the place she’s in. She believes that our body knows the answer, and our hand has muscle memory. When she creates her work, she seldom lets the brain tell her what to do, instead, she lets the heart guide the hands to play with the material. The land you stand on shapes who you are. When you move around, you always take something with you and leave something behind.
Vivian Qiu is a sentimental jewellery designer and teaching artist with a fashion design background. Her jewellery practice focuses on reflective design based on sentiment, self-healing and cultural identity. She makes materials for her own jewellery and artwork, such as rice fabric and rice clay.
She has also collaborated with galleries, museums and organisations to deliver interactive workshops, such as the National Gallery of Victoria, Signal, City of Melbourne and the Immigration Museum. Vivian has presented her work in solo and group exhibitions in Australia and Sweden. Vivian worked as an artist in residence at McKinnon Secondary College as part of a six-month Creative Workers in Schools program initiated by Regional Arts Victoria in 2021.
She has three solo exhibitions in Melbourne in 2023:
What is your root? – Incinerator Gallery (Offsite gallery space: Avondale Heights Library and Learning Centre)
Soil Clay – presented by Manningham Council, as part of Craft Contemporary 2023, an annual festival delivered by Craft Victoria.
Slow Making – RMIT First Site Gallery (upcoming)
Vivian Qiu, ‘Cradling you gently in the palms of my hands’, 2023, grass, and soil from Sweden, rice, flour, pigment, 50cm in length. Photo: Marina Yatsenko
Vivian Qiu, ‘Cradling you gently in the palms of my hands’, 2023, grass, soil, rice, flour, pigment, 50cm in length. Photo: Vivian Qiu