About
Vicki McConville is an Australian artist, also known by her ancestral name, Vittoria Minotti. She signs her work as ‘VM’.
Over an extensive career, she has worked in print media, mirrored installations, video, film, and sound. She has worked as a writer, researcher, broadcaster, and performer. Vicki has exhibited in Australia, U.K, Europe, U.S.A, India, China. Her work is held in significant Australian and International public and private collections.
She has been the recipient of major art awards, grants and prizes, including being a recipient of the Endeavour Prime Minister’s Australia-Asia Award. She has been awarded multiple grants from Creative Australia (formerly the Australia Council), Creative Victoria (formerly Arts Victoria), Regional Arts Victoria, AusTrade, Australia-India Council, Monash University Postgraduate Award, and the Australian Research Training Award. She has been an Artist in Resident and Artistic Director on large-scale projects in Australia, Italy, Turkey, India, China and Switzerland. She has collaborated and presented at conferences and events internationally and has worked as both a Visual Art Educator and as an Experiential Arts Facilitator in Australian Universities.
As an advocate for visual artists, Vicki has been an Artist Board member of the Print Council of Australia (PCA), the International Digital Art Award (IDAA) and the National Association for the Visual Arts (NAVA), the peak organisation representing Australian visual artists. She is a member of Res Artis and Transartists, the peak organisations related to global Artist in Residencies.
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From 2015 to 2024, Vicki McConville lived and worked in both Australia and Italy, whilst also working on five major residencies worldwide.
In 2018, as part of the collateral programme of Art Basel, Vicki McConville presented her work at Atelier Mondial Salon, Basel, Switzerland. The project, Mappa Mundi Minotti, spanned a 6-month residency at Atelier Mondial, exploring her Italian-Swiss (Ticino) ancestry. During this period, she also exhibited her work Black Out Basel at Austellungsraum Klingental.
In 2015-2016, she represented Australia as part of a 3-month residency at the Kochi Muziris Biennale, Fort Kochi, India, collateral program.
In 2013, Vicki McConville was awarded the Prime Minister’s Australia-Asia Award by then Prime Minister Julia Guillard, as part of her PhD candidature at Monash University, Australia.
From 2013 and 2018, as part of the award, she produced her major studio based research project, The Essence of Containment: Traversing the Terrain of Trade and Transformation. The project involved creative production and exhibitions at prominent Artist in Residencies in Venice (Internazionale di Graffica, coinciding with Venezia Biennale), in Delhi (Sanskriti Kendra, coinciding with Delhi Art Fair), Istanbul (Halka Art Projects) and in Beijing, (Red Gate Gallery) Residency.
Over her career she has received commissions and large scale grants from the Australia Council for the Arts (now Creative Australia,) Arts Victoria (now Creative Victoria), Regional Arts Victoria, the National Association of the Visual Arts ( N.A.V.A), the Australia-India Council, Austrade, Monash University Research and Travel Grants, as well as multiple regional councils.
In 2005, she exhibited her project Memento Mori: Art Archives and Archetypes at Span Gallery Melbourne, as part of her Master of Fine Arts, Monash University, Melbourne. Exploring themes of death, dying, memory and memorial, the project included a series of diorama mirrored boxes, prints, soundtracks, found nests and super 8 archival footage. It was accompanied by a 20,000 word written thesis.
In 2000, Vicki McConville was selected to represent Australia at the Centenary of Federation Heads Up Festival with a major solo exhibition at London’s Commonwealth Institute (now the London Design Museum) and at Bristol’s Commonwealth Museum. The project was supported by Arts Victoria (now Creative Victoria) and the Dame Elisabeth Murdoch Foundation. The project, The Foreigner’s Power of Observation was opened by the then Arts Minister’s of both Australia and the UK. The project had previously toured in Melbourne and across major galleries in Regional Australia supported by Regional Arts Victoria. The work, exploring her own and Australia’s cultural histories, spanned large scale early Lambda digital prints, diorama boxes, found objects and soundscapes.
In 1998 she was the Artistic Director of the Channels Project spanning a 450km zone in Regional Australia. The project was awarded major grants by both Regional Arts Victoria and the Australia Council for the Arts (now Creative Australia).
Trained as a Printmaker, Vicki McConville was a very early adoptee of new digital technology in the mid 1990’s. She began using computers to further enhance her detailed collage based image making process and was one the earliest visual artists to produce large scale Lambda prints.
In 1995 she was the Principal Artist and Artistic Director of the Y.A.R.D.S (Yarraville Arts Railway Design Site) in Melbourne’s inner west, supported by the Australia Council for the Arts Community and Cultural Development Board and Regional Arts Victoria.
In 1994 she exhibited at the National Gallery of Victoria in Domain of the Other, part of the Celebrating Women exhibition. During this period she also worked as an Artist in Resident for the City of Melbourne and was a designer, screenprint project manager at Redletter Press, Melbourne.
In the mid 1980’s, Vicki McConville was an Artist Documentor in video, photography and sound on the Womens Media Unit Project at Radio Stations 3RRR and 3CR. She also produced her own radio show, Alien Gods, at 3RRR. She exhibited her work at the inaugural exhibition at Linden Gallery Melbourne and toured her work to multiple galleries in Australia and internationally.
In the early 1980s, Vicki was the Head of the Experiential Arts Unit at Latrobe University’s campus at Abbotsford Convent and a documenter and cataloguer for the National Gallery of Victoria. During this early period of her career, she held a position on the Board of the Print Council of Australia and worked in various creative arts positions at Fringe Network Victoria, Community Music Victoria and Community Arts Victoria.
Over a lengthy career, Vicki McConville has explored shifts in iconographies, perception, memory. In recent years, she has reflected upon her ongoing interest in the power of transformation. As part of this personal exploration, she has attended Psychedelic Retreats in the Netherlands, participated in a Trial at Monash Psychedelic Lab and trained as a Psychedelic Assisted Therapist. In this way, Vicki McConville’s immersive personal practice continues her ongoing interest in the transformative power of the experiential and the ephemeral quality of her creative production over time.