+ Stan Chan

Stan Chan is a highly respected member of the Chinese community who has been teaching and painting through InkLink Studio in Wellington’s iconic Cuba Mall for 40 years. He practises and teaches traditional Chinese brush painting and calligraphy, as well as western oil and watercolour techniques. Stan studied art in Hong Kong before coming to Aotearoa New Zealand in 1972, where he worked as an art director, prior to establishing his own studio in 1979 to work as a full-time artist and freelance art director. He has shown extensively in group and solo exhibitions throughout New Zealand. Chan is a member of The New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts, NZ Oriental Arts Society, Wellington Society of Watercolour Artists and the Wellington Art Club, and regularly paints on stage with performers and music for the Chinese New Year Festivals in Wellington.

+ Guy Ngan (1926-2017)

Guy Ngan 顏國鍇 was a second-generation Chinese-New Zealander born in Wellington whose parents originated from Guangzhou, China. Appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire for services to the arts in 1983, Guy’s expansive practice included sculpture, architecture, painting, printmaking and public art commissions. With a unique perspective on art, architecture and community, Guy Ngan crossed cultural and social boundaries with a visual language that was unmistakably his own. He exhibited extensively both nationally and internationally, and created over 40 public woodcarvings, sculptures and murals throughout Aotearoa New Zealand, with work also commissioned for the Asian Development Bank, Manila; Air New Zealand in Tahiti; the United Nations Building, New York, and the New Zealand Olympic team in Beijing. Ngan was inducted into the Massey University College of Creative Arts Toi Rauwhārangi Hall of Fame in 2012. His work is collected extensively, including by the Wellington City Council, and he had a retrospective exhibition at The Dowse Art Museum, Lower Hutt in 2019.

+ Tien Wei Hee

Wellington-based multidisciplinary artist and illustrator Tien Hee, aka T-Wei, draws inspiration from vintage cartoons, semiotics, and methods of reproduction in his animation-like imagery. Blurring abstraction and the representational, he has created works for Rollingstone Magazine, Jetstar, Bravado, Fool's Gold Records, Garage Project Brewery, for music videos, and street murals in public space. Recently Hee collaborated with Sideshow Collectibles on designer toys and a Marvel-licensed print. Graduating from Massey University in 2012 with 1st class honours in illustration, Hee was selected for the 2014 Pictoplasma Masterclass in character creation, Berlin, following an inclusion in their show in Monterrey’s Museum of Contemporary Art. He has exhibited at Chengdu Creativity & Design Industry Expo in conjunction with Chromacon and Moonlight Gallery, 2017, at Chromacon Indie Arts Festival, Auckland, 2019, and Designercon, Los Angeles, 2019.

+ Jade Townsend

Whanganui-born, Auckland-based multimedia artist Jade Townsend works from and through cultural intersections to explore translation and navigation. Her interest in whakapapa and the origin of things is inspired by her Ngāti Kahungunu, Pākehā and Liverpudlian heritage. Her ongoing interest in consumer behaviours propelled by tourisim and mass consumption has seen her look to residue materials, transforming the detritus of closed mega-department stores and tourist and local marine industries into staged photographs and delicately woven painted collage and textile works. Graduating with honours in Fine Art-Painting from Manchester Metropolitan University(2010), Townsend exhibited at UK Hermès boutique stores, and at Pataka Art Gallery & Museum, Porirua, The Dowse Art Museum Lower Hutt, Te Tuhi Contemporary Gallery, Auckland, the Westpac Stadium Mural Project, Wellington. Townsend was invited to undertake an artist residency and exhibition at the prestigious Slade School of Art with Camden Arts Centre, London, in 2017, and was the first female artist invited to exhibit at the exclusive Comme des Garçons boutique at the IT Beijing Market, achieved through her 2014 WARE residency in Beijing. Townsend has just finished a mini-residency with Objectspace and will be exhibiting at Objectspace, Ramp Gallery and RM Gallery in early 2021.

+ Simon Kaan

Dunedin-born and -based printmaker, painter, performance artist and curator Simon Kaan (Kāi Tahu, Chinese and European descent) utilises sepia tones, washed out lines and floating, waka-like imagery to depict mythological places of land, sea and sky in his meditative works. Graduating with a Diploma of Fine Arts with Honours in 1993, and undertaking an artist residency in 2000 at Otago Polytechnic, Kaan first travelled to China in 2003 - the first member of his family to visit China since his grandfather arrived in Port Chalmers in 1896, followed by the 2004 WARE artist residency and exhibition at the Red Gate Gallery, Beijing, Kaan visited China for the third time in 2007, again exhibiting at Red Gate Gallery. Kaan has undertaken commissions for the Department of Conservation and the Maori Select Committee, New Zealand Parliament and has exhibited in private galleries and public institutions including the International Symposium on Electronic Arts, IAIA, Santa Fe, New Mexico; Blue Oyster Project Space, Dunedin; The Suter Te Aratoi o Whakatu, Nelson; Burringa Gallery, Melbourne; Dunedin Public Art Gallery; Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetu.

+ Erica Sklenars

Wellington-based artist and designer Erica Sklenars works in new media, video art, installation, and performance, exploring modes of communication between pop culture and underground cultures, DIY adaptation and technology hacking. Graduating with a Masters of Fine Arts from Massey University, Sklenars undertook the 2015 Wellington Asia Residency Exchange with Red Gate Gallery, Beijing and was invited back in 2017 for a second residency. In 2019 Sklenars undertook the In-situ Hong Kong artist residency. Working with sound artists and musicians to create performance environments, as ‘Lady Lazer Light’, Sklenars has created installations for Lux Light Festival Wellington; The Performance Arcade; Urban Dream Brokerage; Hildelund Arts Festival, Sweden; Fusion Festival, Germany; 16th OPEN International Performance Art Festival, Beijing; fashion label Nom*D and musicians Orchestra of Spheres, The All-Seeing Hand, Lord Echo, The Black Seeds, French for Rabbits and Estere.

+ Kim Lowe

Ōtautahi Christchurch-based, fourth-generation-Chinese/Pākehā painter and printmaker Kim Lowe explores ancient Chinese philosophy, landscapes, faux/historical points of view and aspects of Chinese aesthetics and painting techniques in her work. Graduating with a Master of Fine Arts in Printmaking at the University of Canterbury School of Fine Arts in 2009, in 2012-3 Lowe coordinated Shared Lines: Sendai-Christchurch Art Exchange in Japan, Christchurch and Queenstown, and established the shared art and music workspace Toi Te Karoro (Art New Brighton) in central New Brighton. The recipient of the prestigious Olivia Spencer Bower Foundation Award and residency in 2019, Lowe has exhibited nationally and internationally, recently at Chambers and Ilam Galleries, Christchurch, Museum Kranenburgh and Gallery Schlessart Bergen, Netherlands, and at the Impact9 International Print Conference, Hangzhou China. Her work is held in public and private collections including Te Puna o Waiwhetū Christchurch Art Galley (OSB) Collection, James Wallace Arts Trust and the NZ Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade Collection.

+ Kerry Ann Lee

Kerry Ann Lee is a visual artist, designer and educator from Wellington, New Zealand whose work explores urban settlement and culture clash occurring in the Asia-Pacific region in particular Chinatowns. Lee's practice-based research into the Cantonese Chinese Diaspora around the Asia Pacific over the past decade, has seen her actively contribute to this field through many artworks, installations, and in 2007 was the recipient of the Asia New Zealand Emerging Researcher Award. She regularly works and exhibits both nationally and internationally. In 2009 Lee received a Fulbright Award to attend the Summer Residency Program at the School of Visual Arts (SVA) in New York City, and she was an artist-in-residence at island6 Art Centre Shanghai through the WARE (Wellington Asia Residency Exchange) Programme. In 2012, Lee was the inaugural Asia New Zealand artist-in-residence at the Taipei Artist Village in Taiwan and attended the SOMA Summer residency programme in Mexico City in 2016. Lee was Creative Director of the national arts festival and symposium Asian Aotearoan Arts Hui 2018 hosted by Massey University in partnership with Te Papa Tongarewa, and, also at Te Papa in the same year, was commissioned to create Return to Skyland, an immersive and multi-layered art and social environment for the Terracotta Warriors: Guardians of Immortality exhibition. Lee is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Design at Massey University Wellington.

+ Daniel Belton

Dunedin-based Daniel Belton is an internationally celebrated dance-film maker and choreographer. He is an accomplished multi-media arts practitioner with over 30 years-experience working in film, cinematography, projection mapping, motion capture, fine art, sound, and design. He was the recipient of Creative New Zealand’s Choreographic Research Residency, visiting Media Artist in Residence at Massey University, and Arts Council of New Zealand’s Choreographic Fellow. In 2015 he was made an Arts Foundation of New Zealand Arts Laureate. Daniel’s production company Good Company Arts creates live events and installations through the fusion of multiple art forms. With an established reputation as innovators, Good Company Arts brings powerful multi-media arts experiences to diverse spaces, venues and festivals at Arts House Singapore, Xintiandi Festival Shanghai, and the National Museum of Singapore and throughout Asia, the Pacific and Aotearoa New Zealand. In 2019 they were awarded first place in the prestigious Sino x Niio Illumination Art Prize, Hong Kong.

+ Benjamin Buchanan

Ngāmotu New Plymouth-born artist and musician Benjamin Buchanan, of Te Ātiawa, Taranaki and Pākehā descent, engages in the visual worlds of abstraction and pattern-making through with various media including painting, installation and mural-making; his works swinging between small, intimate moments to large-scale immersive installation. Buchanan’s expansive practice spanning twenty plus years playfully explores the narrative potential of abstraction, it's possible personalities and modernist status as imperial signifier, while encompassing pattern-making as Indigenous practice, outside of the dominant Western canon. Buchanan graduated from Otago School of Fine Arts in 1993 and Auckland University Elam School of Fine Arts in 1998, Buchanan is currently undertaking an MFA at Massey University Wellington. He has presented solo exhibitions at Dunedin Public Art Gallery and the Dowse Art Museum. Buchanan was the 2012 recipient of the WARE residency, exhibiting at Beijing International Design Week and has undertaken an Asian NZ residency in Bangalore, India. His work is held in private and public collections including at Wellington City Council, and he exhibits widely, in international and national solo and group shows in dealer and artist-run spaces.

+ John Lake

Wellington-based photographer and documentarian John Lake works within environmental portraiture and documentary photography. Graduating with a Masters of Fine Arts, and tutoring in photography at Massey University Wellington, Lake has exhibited his photography series at The Dowse Art Museum, Lower Hutt, Adam Art Gallery and Thistle Hall, Wellington and St Paul Street Gallery, Auckland. Lake also makes video and interviews focussed on the intersection between music, culture and socio-political scenes in different cultural contexts, most recently in Manila, Phillipines, talking with punk band THE EXSENADORS and hip hop collective SANDATA in 2019 on their responses to the extrajudicial killings under President Duterte’s rule. Lake undertook the 2013 WARE residency, creating a cultural exchange and collaboration between the Wellington and Beijing punk scenes through exhibiting at Red Gate Gallery and producing the zine ‘Up the Punks Beijing’, about the city’s punk music culture.

+ Yin-Ju Chen

Taiwan-born, Taipei-based artist Yin-Ju Chen’s works explore planetary-scaled themes; human and nature, the collective (un)-consciousness, power and totality, past, present, and future catastrophes, and religion. Utilising sacred geometries and alchemical symbols, Chen interprets social power and history through cosmological systems. Chen has participated in many international exhibitions and film festivals; Taipei Biennial, Gwangju Biennale, the 5th Ural Industrial Biennial of Contemporary Art, International Film Festival Rotterdam, Transmediale, Liverpool Biennial, Biennale of Sydney. Chen undertook the 2017 WARE artist residency in Wellington, exhibiting at City Gallery Wellington in Occulture: The Dark Arts, curated by Aaron Lister, and travelling within Aotearoa New Zealand.

+ Moniek Schrijer

Wellington-born and -based jewellery artist Moniek Schrijer skilfully adapts and alters materials - collected largely from second hand and recycled sources - using a variety of traditional and unconventional jewellery techniques that allow her pieces to move between the jewel and the object. Graduating with a Bachelor of Applied Arts and a Post-Graduate Diploma in Jewellery and Printmaking from Whitireia, Schrijer has undertaken the 2016 Herbert Hofmann Preis and the 2015 Françoise van den Bosch artist residencies in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, and in 2017 Moniek explored the transformative elements of memory, the souvenir and the replica alongside the mass-produced, cryptocurrency and the ancient coin form for her exhibition Diamonds and Rust at the Chinese European Arts Centre Gallery the culmination of her 2017 WARE residency in Xiamen, China. Schrijer has exhibited widely in group and solo exhibitions, with her work in significant public and private collections of Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa and The Dowse Art Museum. Schrijer exhibited at the Museum of Art and Design, New York in 2019 and at Objectspace, Auckland, in 2020 and will undertake the McCahon House artist residency in 2021.