Much of Vivian Lynn’s art was driven by her desire to challenge and disrupt the established order. Here, she has used the analogy of a children’s playground to critique the repressive society she saw around her in 1970s Aotearoa New Zealand. The figures riding swings and playing on see-saws are neither young, nor carefree. Instead they are grotesque automatons, imprisoned within a system of conformity. It’s an unexpectedly dystopian vision, in which people follow the roles assigned to them without question or agency; mere cogs in an endlessly spinning wheel with no possibility of escape.

(Perilous: Unheard Stories from the Collection, 6 August 2022- )