Viv Miller works across painting, drawing and animation and confidently employs both representational and abstract approaches to form her distinct imagery. She draws influences from the natural world and sublime landscapes along with computer graphics and cell animation, with recognisable inflections of Japanese, as well as Western traditions. Explaining how much of her recent work has focussed on the sun, she considers it as an omnipresent force which nonetheless cannot be looked at directly. The sun’s sublime qualities render it an impossible subject and therefore perfect for Miller’s painterly enquiries. Miller also explains that she has attempted to develop ways to represent more ethereal qualities in her work, like air and spaciousness. She makes no claim to having conquered these subjects, but instead allows them to provide a source upon which to develop modes of her own painterly expression.
Currently living in Naarm/Melbourne, Miller completed a Bachelor of Visual Arts (Hons. 1) at the University of South Australia and a Master of Fine Arts at the Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne. Most recently, Miller was shortlisted for the Geelong Contemporary Art Prize and John Leslie Art Prize (2024); and the Darebin Art Prize, Bundoora Homestead Art Centre, Melbourne, and the Ramsay Art Prize, Art Gallery of South Australia (2019).
Miller was a co-founder of artist-run gallery Downtown Art Space in Adelaide and in 2005/06 undertook a two year studio residency at Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces. Miller has exhibited with Neon Parc and Ryan Renshaw Gallery as well as a broad range of artist-run and government funded spaces. Her work is held in private collections in Australia and overseas as well as UBS, Brisbane; Artbank, Macquarie Group; Sydney and New York, BHP Billiton, Melbourne and Proclaim, Melbourne.