Yvonne Todd was born in 1973 in Takapuna, Auckland. She studied professional photography at Unitec in the mid-1990s and completed her BFA at Elam School of Fine Arts in 2001. Her final-year submission at Elam, Asthma & Eczema, won her the inaugural Walters Prize in 2002, catapulting her to national recognition. Awarding the prize, judge Harald Szeemann said Todd’s was ‘the work that irritated me the most’.  In 2004, writer Anthony Byrt described her as ‘the best artist of her generation’. Todd, on the other hand, calls herself a ‘lazy perfectionist’. Her work has been showcased in numerous exhibitions, nationally and internationally, including Mixed-Up Childhood (2005), High Tide (2006), the 2006 Busan Biennale, Unnerved (2010), the 2010 Sydney Biennale and 2014  Edinburgh Festival. It is held in many significant Australasian public museum collections.

Todd is represented by Ivan Anthony Gallery, Auckland; Peter McLeavey Gallery, Wellington.