Victoria King

artist, writer

Come, see real

flowers

of this painful world.

Basho (1644-1694)

Poem by Matsuo Basho (1644 - 1694) from On Love and Barley: Haiku of Basho © Penguin Classics, 1985.

Top photo: Memento Mori sculpture series. Plaster-drenched recycled fabric over found objects.

Monoprint on recycled paper, stoneware sculptural ceramics made from recycled clay, and sculpture made with recycled paper pulp and discarded pigments.

For information about sizes or prices, please email: vkblackstone@gmail.com

© Copyright of text and artwork Dr. Victoria King 2025.

What does it mean to feel a sense of belonging, to be embodied, present in a specific place? Or to feel out of place, displaced, unconnected to ourselves and others? Can the woodlands, mountains, streams, rivers, seas, deserts, grasslands, towns and cities of our childhood influence our sense of self and resonate within us as adults? How important is nature when so many of us by necessity live in cities

As an artist and writer who has lived in America, England and Australia, I asked myself these questions as I watched my artwork change with conscious and unconscious intent in relation to where I lived. In 2000, I began research which resulted in my PhD Art of Place and Displacement: Embodied Perception and the Haptic Ground (UNSW, 2005). In it I included reflections upon the time I spent alone with Canadian-American artist Agnes Martin at her home and studio in Taos, New Mexico and my experiences volunteering at the remote Aboriginal outstation of Utopia in Australia’s arid red centre where I collected the stories of thirteen remarkable women artists related to Emily Kngwarray.

Being an artist is a privilege, yet like all humans, we have blind spots. Consumption as the world burns. I grieve for our planet’s vulnerable human and more-than-human species and natural environments. Displaced to urban England in 2018 after living off grid on 55 remote waterfront acres on a small island off Tasmania, my conscience demands that my artwork have a low ecological footprint. My recent work is made solely from discarded and recycled materials. The sculptures are embodiments of memory, manifestations of joy, chaos, despair, disintegration, impermanence, renewal. Lines of thought, thread, cloth, clay, plaster, paint and paper merge to bind, wrap, enfold, embrace, swathe, constrict, blur, entangle, swaddle and shroud a cacophony of strange, interstitial memento mori. Primal, ambiguous, often blob-like ur-objects hold space at the intersection of nature and a culture known for its obscene waste. Each piece is singular yet interconnected. Juxtapositions are infinite. A jumble of shapeshifting, unravelling threads hang suspended by a whisper as tall, free-standing pieces rise above the fracas and floor pieces collapse.

My essays combine extensive research with reflections on my art practice, life and journeys across countries and cultures, and the ethics and responsibilities of being an artist. My artwork has been shown in over 60 art exhibitions including 14 solo shows. A curated 25-year solo retrospective was shown in two public art galleries in Australia in 2005, and a solo museum retrospective of more than 40-years of my artwork was held in England between November 2021 and March 2022. My writing has been published in books and international journals, and my artwork chosen for nine book covers.

Just before my September 2025 Holden Gallery exhibition I gave a talk in my studio space that was presented at the conference ‘Materiality, Dimensionality, and Embodied Sensation in Contemporary Artistic Practice’. In the 20-minute video of the talk I speak about the philosophical and spiritual background to my art practice: https://www.victoria-king.com/exhibition-videos

In 2023, Dr. Giovanni Aloi, editor of Antennae: The Journal of Nature in Visual Culture interviewed me about Aboriginal art and my experiences at Utopia for the Antennae Spring 2023 edition, Issue 60: Https://www.antennae.org.uk/back-issues-1

Spirit Ground, my essay on Agnes Martin’s art and life in the American southwest can be read at Environmental and Architectural Phenomenology, Summer/Fall 2024, Volume 25, No. 2: https://www.academia.edu/118663840/ENVIRONMENTAL_and_ARCHITECTURAL_PHENOMENOLOGY_summer_fall_2024_special_35th_anniversary_issue_

In December 2025 my essay The Abject Sublime was published in Environmental and Architectural Phenomenology, Winter/Spring 2026.

Photographs from my five-week solo journey through Japan in October and November 2025 can be seen under the Photography tab.