About VIOLET
Hello!Violet Bond (born 1986) is an Australian multi-disciplinary artist born and raised in the remote Indigenous community of Maningrida in the Northern Territory. Her practice includes performance art, photography, scanography, video, ceramics, and instalation, often incorporating wild clay, found materials, and other ephemeral elements including the artists own body.
She has exhibited internationally, including a solo show with live performance in Paris (2024) with Achetez de l’Art, participation in Art Basel Miami Beach, solo exhibitions at Uncommon Gallery, Seoul, and a major solo at the Northern Centre for Contemporary Art, Darwin amongst many other noteworthy showings.
Bond’s practice has been profiled in print and video interviews and featured in private and public collections worldwide, reflecting her ongoing commitment to raw, unfiltered expressions of the Australian outback and her advocacy for Indigenous Australian rights.
“Life in squares”
Coming to Qubit Gallery this April 2026
Violet Bond and I have been talking about working together for some time. While she has created works in a range of mediums, I have remained a slave to clay. Violet is my niece and we both lived in the Top End for a long time so communication and collaboration has been a natural, smooth exercise.
For the past few years I have been drawn to the look and texture of dry glazes and I have been experimenting with them on a variety of shapes and clay bodies. While Violet’s work has taken her all over the world het more recent has involved collecting natural and discarded objects and using them to create compelling images in a variety of ways and on a range of surfaces.
The title for the exhibition came from a number of inspirational sources. We both realised that the square is a shape we were drawn to in our current work and is one that is so dominant in all aspects of everyday life. And while not all pieces in the exhibition are square in form there are links and suggestions to the square throughout.
The work is collectable, interactive and inviting to touch. The colours used and obtained combine the natural hues of our northern environment with those we are drawn to in our decorative life spaces.
Words by Cecily Willis
See the Off the Leash feature
WORKS ON PAPER
Print on 350gsm watercolour cotton rag paper.
Signed limited editions
Printed in Darwin Australia
Paper size: 46×42cm
Fragments of the natural world are gathered and held within quiet structures, where movement is paused and form is preserved. Referencing histories of collection and display, these works sit between beauty and restraint.
Memories of childhood, fragmented, beautiful culturally diverse and of home -
Japanese sashimi of blue and white plates and Earl grey tea.
International shipping available.
From the exhibition
Original paintings - raw pigments on linen
Collected throughout the Northern Territory, they tell the story of a life lived in the dirt, in wild places.
Working with raw pigments, Bond applies and disrupts the surface by hand, using pressure, scraping, and abrasion to create each mark. The works hold a physical record of gesture, where material and body meet.