Vincent Ward is a New Zealand artist and award-winning filmmaker, internationally recognised for his ability to convey charged emotional and psychological experiences through his experimental approach to the use of moving image. Engaging in a visceral visual language, he explores the essential nature of life and our relationship with the physical world and psychic states. His contribution to international film making was explored in the US publication on his work ‘Making the Transformational Moment in Film’ by Michael Wiese, published in 2011.
Ward’s films have received international acclaim at both the Academy Awards and the Cannes Film Festival. In 1999 Ward developed with his team a motion painting aesthetic that lead to an Academy Award for best visual effects for his film ‘What Dreams May Come’ and he continued to develop these techniques, ensuring his practice remains at the forefront of innovation in this area. In 2007 Ward received the New Zealand Order of Merit (NZOM) for his services to film; he has been Guest Professor at the School of Fine Arts, Hanzhou, China; and is Adjunct Professor at the University of Canterbury, where he first studied art and completed a Dip FA (Hons) in 1978 and which more recently conferred on Ward an Honorary Doctorate in Fine Arts.
Seeking to engage more deeply with his art alongside his commercial film direction, Ward has exhibited consistently since 2012, in both public and private galleries in New Zealand and the Shanghai Biennale.
Ward lives and works in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand.
