Vivienne Joyce Binns (born 1940) is an Australian artist known for her contribution to the Women's Art Movement in Australia, her engagement with feminism in her artwork, and her active advocacy within community arts. She works predominantly in painting. Early life Binns was born in Wyong, New South Wales, Australia, in 1940. She was the youngest of five children of her parents Joyce and Norman. Norman had enlisted in the army six months prior to Vivienne's birth and spent the majority of five years serving in the Middle East and Papua New Guinea, while Joyce and the children lived in Young, New South Wales. In 1945, following the end of the war, the Binns family returned to Sydney, where Binns grew up, first in Willoughby then Wollstonecraft. From 1953, Binns attended North Sydney Girls High School. She later pursued her tertiary education in art at the National Art School from 1958 to 1962. After her graduation, Binns stayed on campus and took on a teaching role in the drawing department. She never conformed to traditional gender roles, and, during a time of "initial, intense, introversion", was questioning her sexuality as well as interrogating the philosophies and ideas in making art, in particular Dadaism. Career Binns' first solo exhibition Vivienne Binns: Paintings and Constructions was held at Watters Gallery in Sydney in 1967. Her most well-known painting, Vag Dens, featuring a brightly-coloured vagina with teeth, was hung alongside Phallic Monument, which featured male genitals. Some critics excoriated her work, using phrases such as "monumental repulsion", "pure obscene horror", "the most disturbing artwork I've ever seen". Artist and critic Elwyn Lynn wrote that her work her work "affronts masculinity". After this show, Binns felt that she needed a break from painting, and became involved in community arts. In 1973, Binns worked as a field officer for the Community Arts Program, an Australia Council initiative, visiting regional areas to "investigate needs, resources and possibilities" and doing a huge amount to stimulate and promote community arts. She started working with vitreous enamel and other mediums formerly regarded as "crafts" rather than art. She was influenced by and became a friend of visiting US feminist art critic Lucy Lippard in 1975, afterwards visiting New York City and connecting with the women's art movement there. In 1979, she began her artist-in-residence program at the University of New South Wales, followed by artist-in-community placements in a range