Kylie Banyard's practice engages with painting, photography, textiles and sculpture to explore the critical potential of the utopian imagination. Her research questions and tests how speculative and poetic encounters with place and the more than human world (both contemporary and historical) can bring about other more generative and just ways of living and learning.
Recent projects include solo exhibitions at Verge Gallery, the University of Sydney (September 2024), and Nicholas Thompson Gallery, Melbourne (November 2024). Recently, she was curated into a group exhibition at ANCA (Canberra) as part of The Care Projects (2023 curated by Rebecca Mayo, ANU). She was also invited to create a limited edition print for the inaugural round of Kaleidoscope Editions: a new print publishing initiative (founding directors Kelly Gellatley, Kirsty Grant and Bronwyn Johnson) that brings together contemporary Australia artists with the country’s most skilful masterprinters. Kylie worked with Trent Walter of Negative Press to produce a limitted edition screen print.
In 2019 Banyard was invited by curators Anna Davis and Clothilde Bullen to produce a major series newly commissioned works for the second installment of 'The National 2019: New Australian Art' at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Australia; in 2020 she completed a collaborative Virtual Reality Studio with Tactical Spacelab (funded by the Australia Council and Arts NSW); she has been included in significant group and two person exhibitions including; The Heroine Paint, Lismore Regional Gallery (2021); Art from Down Under: Australia to New Zealand, Turchin Center for the Visual Arts, North Carolina (2018); Another Green World, The Western Plains Cultural Centre (2017); The Mnemonic Mirror, Griffith University Art Museum, Brisbane, and UTS Gallery, Sydney (2016-2017). She has contrubted to projects funded by The Australia Council for the Arts and Regional Arts Victoria, and has received competitive funding from Arts NSW and the National Association for the Visual Arts, as well as postgraduate research grants including the Australian Postgraduate Award from the University of NSW and the COFA, UNSW Travel Grant.
She has been the recipient of several competitive artist’s residencies, such as the Cité International des Arts Paris, France and the Firstdraft Emerging Studio Residency Program, Sydney. Banyard has been a finalist in the Len Fox Painting Prize, the Arthur Guy Memorial Painting Prize, the Ravenswood Australian Women’s Art Prize, the Hazelhurst Art on Paper award. She was winner of the National Tertiary Art Prize and The recipient of the Basil and Muriel Art’s Scholarship, Art Gallery of NSW.
Banyard holds both a Masters of Fine Arts and a PhD from UNSW, she is a Senior Lecturer in Visual Arts at La Trobe University. Her work is held in numerous public and private collections including Artbank Australia, Bendigo Art Gallery, the University of Wollongong, The University of NSW, Xavier College Melbourne and Stonnington Council.