Artist's Biography
Born in Kawakawa, Northland in 1946, as a child I lived in Ohaeawai, Kerikeri and Paihia. Following the death of my father when I was 12, I attended secondary school at Sacred Heart College, Hutt City and Wellington Polytechnic School of Design, Elam School of Fine Arts, Auckland and Chelsea Art School, Hammersmith, London. I have three children and live and work in Auckland with Architect husband Mike. Sculpture became my preferred art form in the early 1980's.
My interactive public commissions include the Rewarewa Creek Footbridge, 1995 and Aramarama Millennium Footbridge, Mission Bay, Auckland in 2000; Koru and Raupo Rattler, 2001 at Brick Bay, Matakana, Northland; Oioi Bridge, 2002 at Connells Bay Centre for Sculpture, and Tower of Words - Tower of Silence, 2003 at Omaru Bay, Waiheke Island.
International Public Sculpture collections include: Pacific Star, and Colony at the Jean-Marie Tjibaou Cultural Centre, Noumea, New Caledonia; Limpet, Hawaii State Art Museum, Honolulu; Limpet-Shrine, Singapore Tourism Bureau and Leaf, Frond and Coral at the University of Singapore.
Reed Vessel, a major eighteen meter sculpture installation, commissioned for the Docklands Public Art Walk, Docklands Park, Melbourne, was completed in 2004.
I created Pacific Star, a floating installation for the opening of the Jean-Marie Tjibaou Cultural Centre, Noumea in 1998, the same year Limpet-Shrine won the Jane Campion Memory Award at Sculpture by the Sea, Sydney. My exhibition Tideline, A Ten Year Survey, was presented at the Whangarei Art Museum in 1999.
Awarded an Antarctic Artist Fellowship in 1999, I travelled to Antarctica and on my return created Antarctic Heart, an installation of video and sculpture shown in black light. The exhibition toured public galleries New Zealand and Australia between 2001 and 2008, including the opening of Christchurch Art Gallery, Te Puna O Waiwhetu.
I was commissioned to create the David Lange Memorial in Otahuhu, Auckland in 2008 and Hinaki Guardian, a six meter high sculpture was installed on the Hobsonville Wharf in 2013.
At Sculpture on the Gulf on Waiheke Island I have exhibited and received the Peoples Choice Award three times; Matiatia Frond, 2003; Nautilus Whispers, 2007 ; Lookout- Pacific Radiolaria 2011. My sculpture was included in the Fifth Goodman-Suter Contemporary Art Project, The Maui Dynasty in Nelson, 2008 and at Kaohsiung Museum, Taiwan in 2009 with The Great Journey, In Pursuit of the Ancestral Realm. As Distinguished Invited Artist I participated in Sculpture by the Sea, Bondi in 2010 and exhibited at Sculpture by the Sea, Cottesloe, Perth, in 2011.
My sculpture was included in Current, Contemporary Oceanic Artists, at the October Gallery in Bloomsbury, London, 2011, before an Artist Residency at Holualau, Big Island, Hawaii in September the same year.
Woman of Words, a unique figurative sculpture celebrating the life of Katherine Mansfield, was installed in Lambton Quay, Wellington, 2013.
Virginia King Sculptor was published by David Bateman Limited, 2005 (ISBN 1- 86953 -615-0)
Recent Work, Virginia King 2006-2012. An updating catalogue was published in 2012.