Biography
Film
Vincent Ward, NZOM is best known for directing Academy Award winning film, What Dreams May Come, starring Robin Williams.
His early features were the first New Zealand films to be accepted 'In Competition' at the Cannes Film Festival. These films - Vigil, The Navigator and Map of the Human Heart, garnered between them over 25 national and international awards.
During his time in Los Angeles, Vincent developed a range of projects including The Last Samurai, which he acted as an Executive Producer on and Alien III for which he received a story credit.
Returning to New Zealand after What Dreams May Come, he went on to make River Queen with Kiefer Sutherland and Samantha Morton, followed by Rain of the Children.
His latest project has been a feature film that was interrupted by the war in Ukraine.
More recently he has been developing a drama series in Europe, although he currently resides in New Zealand where he also works as an artist and writer.
Art
Vincent Ward is a New Zealand artist and award-winning, internationally recognized filmmaker. He is known for his ability to convey powerful emotional and psychological-charged experiences, often delving into themes of transformation, the human condition, and the intersection of spirituality and reality.
In his major body of work Palimpsest, Ward “transforms the human form into monumental landforms; flesh metamorphosises into deserts and reefs. Here, the body is rendered liminal by a shimmer of colour; there, water drips languidly from hair and onto skin. A muscled upper back segues into a cliff face, tectonic and alive.” Susan Walker, Metro
Ward creates psychologically and emotionally evocative metaphorical landscapes, deeply rooted in personal experience, the past, and memory. His works function as palimpsests, where multiple layers have been placed and erased over time, leaving faint traces that reveal layers of meaning, transformation, and historical narratives beneath the surface.
"Ward's ongoing concerns with metamorphosis, falling, light, fear, memory, darkness and the transformative moment have led him to create a series of vast, physically imposing works that delve into other-worldly landscapes and transcendent states, to evocations of loss, redemption and unconscious realms.” Rhana Devenport, director Gallery of South Australia, former director Govett Brewster Art Gallery
In 2012 a high-quality large format art book titled Inhale/Exhale was published by Ron Sang Publishing. The book, with essays written by Andrew Clifford and Roger Horrocks, features images of Ward’s inter-disciplinary artworks from his major exhibitions Vincent Ward: Breath—the Fleeting Intensity of Life at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery and simultaneous exhibitions Inhale/Exhale at the Gus Fisher Gallery and the Arts House Trust.
In 2011, Michael Wiese Productions published Making the Transformational Moment in Film - Unleashing the power of the Image with the Films of Vincent Ward by Dan Fleming.
Ward has exhibited widely since 2012 including major exhibitions at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, Gus Fisher Gallery and the Arts House Trust. He was the first New Zealander to participate in the Shanghai Biennale (2012), and exhibited in the solo pavilion, as a guest of renowned Chinese video artist and curator, Qiu Zhijie.
In 2017 Ward was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Fine Arts by the University of Canterbury, where he also completed a Dip FA (Hons) in 1978. He is an Adjunct Professor at the University of Canterbury (Film and Fine Arts) and has been conferred a guest Professorship at the China Academy of Art, School of Fine Arts, in Hangzhou.