Artists

Yanni Van Zijl

Bio  /  CV

Yanni Van Zijl was born in Melbourne, but now resides on the Sunshine Coast. Yanni is synonymous with environmental activism. She aims to create work that provoke the audience into a renewed awareness to issues like climate change and deforestation.

She creates experiences about humankind and explores environmental accountability through human actions and impacts. To achieve her aims, Yanni draws on a diverse range of media including video, photography, large scale installations, ceramics, sculpture and more recently performance. Recycled and repurposed, anything, even her own body, becomes matter for making art. Yanni aims to create works that are disruptive and questioning, generating awareness and conversation.

When not wearing her environmental art activist hat, Yanni makes ceramic works for the joy of being in tune with the material, these sculptures are studies in flow and form. She invites you to experience the solitude within the spaces created. Play is encouraged, the pieces have more than one possibility, when collectively arranged an entirely different outcome is achieved.


Exhibitions

​Casuistry, Solo exhibition Noosa Regional Gallery​, 2021

​Casuistry Extreme, Judith Wright Centre​, 2021

Casuistry Extreme, traveled North Qld with Flying Arts, 2021

​Centre to Sea, exhibition Maroochydore Environment centre, 2018

​Solo exhibition, That Place in Pomona, 2016

​Sensual Landscape, 11 Squared Gallery – photographic exhibition, 2011

 

Education, Residencies and Prizes

​Residency Maroochy Bush-lands Environment Centre, 2022

Finalist Du Rietz Award, 2021

Environment Award – SOTE , ‘Back from whence they came’, 2020

People’s Choice Award – taste of Art, Noosa Regional Gallery​, 2019

​Finalist Du Rietz Award , ‘Flow‘​, 2019

Peoples Choice Award Taste of Art Noosa,  ‘Chairs for Birds‘, 2019

Environmental Award SWELL GC, ‘Sea Spirit‘, 2019

Overall winner Sculpture on the Edge, ‘Anew’​, 2019

​First Prize Environment Award – SOTE  , ‘Earth Wind & Fire‘, 2018

Second overall SOTE, ‘Habitat Lost‘, 2017

​First prize Environment Award SOTE , ‘Ringbarked‘, 2017

Second prize SOTE, ‘The Point Is’​​, 2016

​Second Prize, Mitchel Rabo bank 3D award, 2016

First prize 3D Kenilworth Art Awards, ‘Shards of the Past’​, 2016

First Prize Mitchel Rabo bank ‘Drought & Flooding Rains‘​, 2016

Grand Champion​Mitchel Art Prize​, 2016

​Finalist 3D Noosa Art Awards, ‘Simmering Seas‘, 2016

Highly commended & People’s Choice Award, ‘ Low Tide’, 2013

People’s Choice Award Cooroy Butter Factory, ‘Perspective in Plastic‘, 2013

 

Work