Kylie Banyard is an artist-researcher whose work engages with painting, photography, textiles and sculpture to explore the transformative potential of the utopian imagination. Through her work she questions and tests how speculative and poetic encounters with place and the more than human world (both past and present) can bring about other more generative and just ways of being. Banyard creates images and environments that offer audiences the chance to glimpse possibilities for hopeful ecological futures. Through her work she channels radical hope as an act of resistance. Her most recent work is informed by a daily ritual shared with her 9 year-old son. Affectionally known as ‘touching’ and performed on walks together. The act of touching and talking to plants has become a speculative daily practice, and it highlights what is at stake when living earthbound – like a plant. Banyard’s works raise questions about what careful time spent encountering and contemplating the lives of these enigmatic vegetal keepers-of-place might teach us about other 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). In 2023 Banyard was curated into a group exhibition at ANCA (Canberra) as part of The Care Projects (curated by Dr Rebecca Mayo, ANU). In 2022, she was 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 Dr Trent Walter from 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 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. 

Banyard 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. She has been a finalist in the Len Fox Painting Prize, the Arthur Guy Memorial Painting Prize, the Ravenswood Australian Women’s Art Prize, and 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, Bendigo. 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 Collection.

An artists’ CV can be downloaded here