Dunedin School of Art

Kelly McDonald completed a Bachelor of Visual Arts at Sydney College of the Arts in the late 90s and a Masters of Fine Art at Massey University in 2019. Growing up in a rural valley amidst several power stations and the largest brown coal deposit in the southern hemisphere, McDonald developed an industrial aesthetic and colour palette. Her material choices still link back to power, its processes of production and the industrial geography of the Latrobe Valley, Australia. McDonald is an avid collector of rusty metal, tools and domestic fixtures found frequently in traditionally masculine and utilitarian fields. McDonald dismembers, re-works, and pairs these with unlikely material bed-fellows to create installations of objects. Once constructed and arranged, these jewel like re-contextualisations create wryly humorous narrative sequences, with moments of absurdist delight and political provocation, particularly in relation to female lived experience. Talking around jewellery, McDonald’s work also speaks directly to the relationship between people and things. Kelly’s proposes to explore the idea of drawing with jewellery during the residency.

Originally from the Parisian metropolis and a graduate of the Fine Arts of Bordeaux, our artist is a traveller at heart, eager for discoveries and enriching encounters. It was during her four-year journey around the world that her steps led her to the magnificent islands of Tahiti, during the final stage of her voyage. Since then, she has won the hearts of the Polynesian public with her iconic works, the artistic posters entitled "ECOLOGICAL UTOPIA." Printed with care on recycled paper and using environmentally friendly vegetable inks, these creations testify to her deep commitment to the preservation of our planet. Furthermore, a portion of the profits generated by these sales is consistently donated to local associations working for environmental causes. An artist at heart, she is also passionate about surfing, deeply immersed in the wild beauty of the oceans. This profound connection with nature inspires her in her artistic work, where she highlights the endangered animal species that inhabit the Polynesian lands, the fenua. However, her work goes far beyond simply representing endangered animals. She seeks above all to pay tribute to the incredible natural heritage of Polynesia, through works that transport us into a floral and marine universe as vibrant as it is dazzling, where color and light blend harmoniously to awaken our senses and environmental consciousness.  https://www.viault-art.com/ 

Julia Holden is an Aotearoa New Zealand artist who foregrounds painting in multi-disciplinary projects that track and reflect New Zealand’s developing social history. Holden’s innovative Performance Painting process combines traditional painting with elements of performance, photography, sound and occasionally film. Following a successful career in film and television, Holden gained a BFA from Elam School of Fine Arts, Auckland in 2007, and an MFA from Monash University, Melbourne, Australia in 2010. She has exhibited widely in New Zealand and Australia, creating many Performance Paintings in public exhibition spaces, such as City Gallery Wellington Te Whare Toi and Sarjeant Gallery Te Whare o Rehua, Whanganui. Holden has been the Tylee Cottage artist-in-residence, Whanganui, and a finalist in many contemporary art awards. Her work is held in public and private collections.

Ko Murihiku Tōku Whaea, Southern Mother

The artists’ explore their connections to Southland and celebrating Murihiku, the great Southern Mother, who nurtured their artistic talents and values. In the Murihiku region, there is a feeling of being lightly tethered to the wild land beneath. At the coast, there are vast skies, far reaching horizon lines, and expansive sea. Inland, landforms loom high, and mountain caps feed the bitterly cold awa. The rich resources of the area have attracted generations of people, however, the harsh climate has put off just as many. Among Southlanders exists a strong social fabric, and your whakapapa — along with the weather — is often the first topic of introduction.

Kyla Cresswell grew up in Murihiku/ Southland, New Zealand. She majored in Printmaking at the Otago School of Art before spending many years travelling, eventually settling in Wellington for 16 years, then more recently Dunedin. Kyla has always been drawn to a pared down aesthetic and through a variety of printmaking techniques—mezzotint, drypoint and embossing—she explores the micro and macro of the natural world. Kyla’s practice relates back to the land. It is grounded in the space where she stands. Her work over the past two decades has often reflected on challenges faced by the natural environment, focusing on nature’s fragility, tenacity and resilience. In 2022 Kyla was awarded the William Hodges Fellowship producing a series of works ‘Tracing the Land’ which explores the biological histories in the built environment. Highlighting the connection between the urban landscape and precious remnant endemic bush and wetland. Kyla has exhibited widely nationally and internationally. Her work is held in private and public collections around the world including the Department of Conservation Collection and the Southland Museum and Art Gallery Collection.

Emma Kitson is an Artist, Designer and Curator who resides in Whanganui a Tara (Wellington). Her whakapapa traces its roots to the small island of Whenua Hou west of Rakiura (Stewart Island) at the southern end of Aotearoa. After graduating from Dunedin School of Fine Art in 1996 she regularly exhibited at the Blue Oyster Gallery including being the curator for their inaugural exhibition, “Collection: Taonga /Trash?” Emma worked at Otago Museum which then led to employment at many museums and art galleries in New Zealand and Australia. After studying Industrial Design at Massey University (2004-2006), she focussed mainly on her design work. She was employed as Exhibition Assistant at the Dowse, and contributed to the design and installation of many exhibitions there. Becoming a mother in 2012 was a catalyst for Emma to return to making art from a desire to create a Māori centered space for her tamahine. While her earlier artwork was mixed media (video/textile/sculpture), and her design work was mostly digital, printmaking became her practice of choice because it combined her love of art and nature with technical problem solving and experimentation. The accessibility of print also made it a practical choice for creating art at home.

Kim Lowe is an artist, printmaker and painter based in Ōtautahi Christchurch. She grew up in Invercargill and is a descendant of Chinese settlers and Pākehā farmers to Southland. Kim’s work is about whakapapa and often incorporates elements from the natural environment of Te Waipounamu with her mixed Chinese ancestry. Kim studied Printmaking at the Dunedin School of Art in 1996 and completed a Masters in Fine Arts at Ilam School of Art, Canterbury University in 2009. She was the recipient of the Olivia Spencer Bower Award in 2019 and is currently Senior Academic at Ara Institute of Canterbury, leading the Applied Visual Arts specialisation of the Bachelor of Design.

Hamish Coleman’s painting explores the interface of the actual and the remembered, blending the genres of landscape and portraiture, abstraction and figuration.

The artist’s signature use of interference oil paint, which changes colour in response to viewing angle, challenges the notion of paint and painting as static. On shimmering and textured surfaces, a sense of the elusive is evoked as image, narrative fragment and colour, slip and shift, escape and reappear with the slightest change of viewing angle. Transience itself presents as his subject. 

Coleman’s starting point is often found film footage or video he has shot himself. Screen shots grab the fleeting moment generating stills which are then rendered in paint, and seemingly remobilised in paint in iridescent hues. The distinctive paint plays with strange croppings, scale distortions and figures on edges looking in, looking back and also out at us. 

The practice of taking Imagery from screen shots of self-shot video footage is a process Coleman enjoys: There’s a certain thrill in capturing a split-second image from a film and spending weeks or months rendering it in paint. I call these screen captures ‘non-images’, and they are what I’m searching for. It’s as if the figure, land and trees were caught off guard, or as if I were a second too slow in capturing a posed scene found through a conventional photograph. 

Coleman also has a drawing practice which runs alongside the painting. A recent suite of drawings saw works on paper freed from the confines of the artist’s sketchpad and beautifully stitched onto velvet and mounted in stained oak frames. The result is an intriguing combination: a tease of the tension between an artist’s preparatory processes and a finished artwork; a play with light and dark; slightness and substance.

Coleman graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Hons) from the Ilam School of Fine Art at the University of Canterbury, in 2012. He has exhibited throughout New Zealand and has work in private and public collections. In 2021, Coleman had had his first public gallery solo exhibition at the Ashburton Art Gallery.

Raquel Salvatella de Prada is a visiting artist in the Dunedin School of Art. Raquel is a computer artist and assistant professor of the practice of Visual Arts at Duke University. She practices graphic design, motion graphics and projection design. Her work often focuses on integrating computer animation and motion design with different traditional art forms, sometimes by collaborating with artists of diverse backgrounds such as printmaking, painting, installation art, puppetry, and theater. She finds that the combination of her digital medium with physical visual media can be a powerful way to communicate social issues.

Jeanne Dubois is an artist and museum guide from Normandy, France.

"Born in Granville, I am french and english from my mother.
I grew up and studied in Paris, where I graduated in ceramics, then after several internships I went on Erasmus in Dublin, Ireland. On returning to France I achieved my bachelor and masters degrees in Art, and participated in ceramics research at the Louvre Research Department and met scientists from the National Museum of Natural History of Paris which inspired my artworks. My thesis « adventure in artchemistry » relates to my own exploration of art and science, with interviews, drawings, ceramics, photography and video installation. In  Normandy I worked in the Christian Dior Museum which allowed me to share my passion for the couturier’s story with guided visits (both french and english), workshops for children and adults about fashion and perfume.

KOP grew up in Rotorua but now lives in Central Otago. She is a multimedia artist whose practice responds to the extremes of land, language, and object. She uses light as the underlining agent that reveals the mistranslated history of her subject matter. She is often drawn to subjects around waste. Her work explores the colonial past as well as the fast acceleration of Climate Change and its links to humans. She explored similar themes in Ireland (in 1996) that resulted in land grabs, burning natural resources and ultimately destruction of human life. 
KOP’s work comes from a history as a print-maker, visible by a clear and developed methodology derived from materials and process. Recent large-scale projects extend within photographic, sculptural and electronic fields using both digital and analogue technologies. Her work has been exhibited in Ireland, Australia, England and Aotearoa New Zealand. KOP is a Dunedin School of Art alumnus. 

Joe Batt is originally from South Dakota, in the U.S. He received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of South Dakota and a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Montana. Currently, Joe is full time art faculty at South Puget Sound Community College in Olympia, Washington. He has also taught at California State University, Chico, California; the University of Montana, in Missoula, Montana; Lower Columbia College in Longview, Washington; and Metchosin Summer School of the Arts in Victoria, B.C.
Recent work includes narrative clay figures, installation, and mixed media pieces which feature hares and children as the main characters. These works are part of an ongoing exploration of innocence, endurance, and our relationship with technology and the natural world. For a list of selected exhibitions see Joe Batt – Ceramic Artist (joebattceramics.com)
Joe has been a McKnight Artist in Residence at the Northern Clay Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He has also done residencies at Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts in Newcastle, Maine, and at Red Lodge Clay Center in Red Lodge, Montana.

Susan Klein (b. 1979, Morristown, NJ) is an artist living in Charleston, South Carolina. Recent exhibitions include Couplets, a solo show at the Gibbes Museum of Art (Charleston), Call/Response, a two-person show at the University of South Carolina, and group shows at Asya Geisberg Gallery (NYC) and Frontviews (Berlin). Klein is an Associate Professor of Art at the College of Charleston, where she is Area Head of Painting. Her most recent work engages with the idea that the act of making can be an act of empathy.
She will be working across the painting and ceramics studios.

Adrienne Martyn is a New Zealand art photographer. Her work has been collected by numerous art galleries, museums and libraries in New Zealand, including the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, the Dowse Art Museum, the Auckland Art Gallery, the Christchurch Art Gallery and the Hocken Library. She is known for her black-and-white portraiture of other New Zealand artists. Her portraiture work was the focus of an exhibition by the Dunedin Public Art Gallery in 1988.

Max Sepulveda is a prolific cross-disciplinary artist in the fields of audio-visual, pottery, textiles, printmaking and mural painting. Initially training in Chile, Argentina and Mexico, he studied Textile Design at the Iberoamerican Univerisity in Mexico City, where he also presented workshops and seminars.

As an active practitioner for 20 years, he has worked with communities in different Chilean regions, Costa Rica, Mexico, Colombia and Uruguay.

The artist conceives community art as a powerful tool for social transformation, therapy and nourishment. His work is inspired by place and embodies its natural and cultural heritage in order to visualize, appreciate, protect and revitalize local identity.

Elisabeth Wildling is a multi-disciplinary artist from Vienna, Austria, where she works as Artistic and Scientific Associate at the University of Applied Arts Vienna.

Her artistic work represents our attention and the regard of our own perception of perception at its centre. Using visual and cinematic techniques, she discusses the coherence of space and time perception in our construction of the unvarying (and unalterable).

Her university activity includes work with student projects as well as teaching in the fields of time-based media, video and projection / installation.

As part of her research during her exchange from Vienna she attended a residency in in India/Tamil Nadu on the Significance of Silence in the Arts, Philosophy and Contemporary Life. Back in Dunedin she shared her experiences and new emerging work with postgraduates and staff.

A member of the International Academy of Ceramics, Joe Bova was educated at the University of Houston (BFA, 1967) and the University of New Mexico (MA, 1969).

A Professor Emeritus from LSU and Ohio University, in 2011 he was a Fulbright Fellow in Dublin, Ireland. Bova has taught workshops at institutions around the globe, including the NY State College of Ceramics at Alfred, University of Georgia’s Cortona Italy Program, Rhode Island School of Design, Archie Bray Foundation, MT, the College of William and Mary, VA, and the Shangyu Celadon Modern International Ceramic Art Center, China.

His work is in many public and private collections, including the Arizona State University Art Museum, International Ceramics Studio, Kecskemet, Hungary, the National Collection of Ireland, the Los Angeles County Museum, CA, the Mint Museum of Art, NC, and the Shangyu Museum, China. Joe Bova lives and works in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

His residency at the Dunedin School of Art was made possible through Moyra Elliot’s “Teaching the Teachers” project, funded by Creative New Zealand.

This residency will establish a network of artists with common interests in printmedia and fine art printmaking processes, politics and current events, to produce of a series of art works.

The production of the works will be facilitated by a series of residencies in Auckland and Dunedin in New Zealand, and in Melbourne, Australia, fostering the development of an on-going international trans-Tasman artist collaboration and community. 

The News Network Print Collective artists are Neil Emmerson, Marion Wassenaar, Marian Crawford, Richard Harding, Chris McBride, Karol Wiłczyńska and Kate Zizys.

The establishment of this trans-Tasman, collaborative community in response to the spectre of Global Media will result in exhibitions, artist talks, the presentation and publishing of papers, and workshops related to the group's productive dynamics over a period of time both together during residencies and when separated by the Tasman.

Pravu Mazumdar studied physics in New Delhi and Munich and has a doctorate in Philosophy from the University of Stuttgart, West Germany.

He writes in German and English, and his books, which use themes like migration and consumerism to unfold a diagnosis of modernity, are closely connected to French Postmodernism, in particular the philosophy of Michel Foucault.

His essay on jewellery was published in 2015 under the title: Gold und Geist: Prolegomena zu einer Philosophie des Schmucks (“Gold and Mind: Prolegomena towards a Philosophy of Jewellery”), Berlin: Matthes & Seitz.

Mark Baskett is a practicing visual artist, born in the city of Dunedin, New Zealand. Currently he is employed as a teacher in the Arts and Media Department at the Nelson Polytechnic (NMIT). His tertiary education began with a BFA (High Distinction) at what was then titled “The Quay School of Arts”, in Whanganui, New Zealand. From 2005-2007 he completed and MFA (Endnote: 1.3) within the Bauhaus Universität, Weimar, and the Universität der Kunst, in Berlin, Germany.

To date his artwork has been exhibited widely in Switzerland, where he lived and worked for a number of years. His work has also been shown in Belgium, the United States, and in Germany, along with some early work exhibited

Karin Johansson, born 1964, lives and works in Gothenburg. She attended HDK Academy of Design and Crafts at the University of Gothenburg, where she earned her MFA degree in 1994.

Her work has been exhibited in solo shows in many international galleries and locations, such as Ornamentum Gallery (Hudson/NY), Galerie Marzee (Nijmegen), Hannah Gallery (Barcelona), OONA Galerie (Berlin) and Atelier Lachaert d`Hanis  (Tielrode), and has also participated in numerous group shows. Her work is features in several private and public collections. She is the recipient of a number of major grants and awards, among them the five-year working grant of the Swedish Arts Grants Committee, which she has received twice.

She is one of the founding members of Hnoss Gallery/Initiative in Gothenburg, and was between 2007-2019 Professor of Jewellery Art at HDK Academy of Design and Crafts at Gothenburg University.

Mark Braunias is a New Zealand based artist who has exhibited extensively over the past 30 years. He graduated with a BFA from Canterbury University, Ilam School of Fine Arts, Christchurch in 1988.

The Artist was the inaugural winner of the James Wallace Art Award in 1992 and received a Wallace/Fulbright scholarship to complete an artist residency at Headlands Center For The Arts in San Francisco during 2011. Braunias has also completed artist residencies at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery (2002), William Hodges Fellowship, Invercargill (2005), and Tylee Cottage, Whanganui (2007).

Mark Braunias has appeared in curated public gallery exhibitions including A very peculiar practice (City Gallery, Wellington, 1995), Gruesome (Robert McDougal Art Gallery, Christchurch, 1999), The Cartoon Show (Auckland Art Gallery, 2002) and Field of Vision: A survey of Mark Braunias (Wallace Arts Centre, Auckland, 2016). The Artist has also exhibited work at Sydney Contemporary Art Fair (2015) and Hong Kong Central  Art Fair (2015) in association with Bath Street Gallery. Braunias has published a number of art catalogues including Praha (1992),  Gank (2001),  A Day In My Life (2003),  My New Art God  (2004),  Congo (2006), Waterfront Industry Commission Report  (2006),  London Town (2008) and Encyclo-Dimensional (2015).

His work is held in public gallery and private collections including : Te Papa Museum, Christchurch Art Gallery, Dunedin Public Art Gallery, Sarjeant Art Gallery, Tauranga Art Gallery, Invercargill Art Gallery and Museum, Ashburton Art Gallery, Auckland University, Canterbury University, Fletcher Trust Collection, Wallace Arts Trust and the State Library Of Queensland.

Barbara Graf was born in 1963 in Winterthur, Switzerland and lives and works in Vienna, Austria and Winterthur, Switzerland.

She studied from 1985-90 at the Academy University of Applied Arts Vienna, Austria and majored in the Master Class for Experimental Art – Painting and Graphics, Prof. Maria Lassnig. From 2003-2010 Barbara became guest lecturer at the Academy of Art and Design (HGK), Fashion Design, Basel in Switzerland.

Since 2004 she is lecturing at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, in the Institute of Art Sciences and Art Education: Textiles. Barbara Graf has been working on the artistic investigation of the human anatomy, the body and its visual culture since 30 years – an example is the invention of the flexible sculptures "Anatomical Garments" (ongoing since 1989): a position between sculpture, clothing as second skin, reflections about medical visualisations and socio-cultural defined visual images of the body.

Executions of the works are mainly in the media of drawing, textiles, photography and film.

Jo St Baker holds a BVA from the Dunedin School of Art and is now based in Brisbane's Moreton Bay. In 2016 Jo has received an Australian Regional Arts Development Grant for a period of experimentation and a solo exhibition in 2017/18.

Her project entitled “Resilience” extends woodcut carving techniques and seeks to blur the lines of drawing, carving, print, painting and sculptural modes of presentation. J

o is currently involved with Migaloo Press and their upcoming Vie du Pacique II, an International Print Exchange for the Asia Pacific Region created by Dr Jennifer Sanzaro Nishimura.

She will be speaking about this event at the Dunedin School of Art.

Angela Dwyer was born in Palmerston North, New Zealand, in 1961. She studied at the Dunedin School of Art at Otago Polytechnic, New Zealand and at the Gippsland School of Visual Arts in Churchhill, Australia.

She has lived and worked in Berlin since 1984. Her works have been shown internationally in solo and group exhibitions in Berlin, Karlsruhe, Cologne, Antwerp, Como and Milan since the 1980s. In 2013 her installations were shown in the exhibition “Farbe Raum Farbe” at the Georg Kolbe, Museum in Berlin.

Angela Dwyer was visiting professor at the Akademie der Bildenden, Künste München. She is a lecturer of design at the Institute of Design in Berlin. Her art has been shown at international exhibitions like Art Cologne, Frieze London, Miami Puls, Art Moscow, Art Brussels, and New York Puls.

Dwyer’s work is also exhibited in different private collections and museums.

Tom Voyce is a 28 year old artist and art teacher currently based in Burton on Trent in Staffordshire. Trained in Fine Art at Aberystwyth University in Wales, Tom gained his bachelor’s degree in 2011- specialising in drawing and painting.

He completed a Master’s degree shortly afterwards allowing him to refine his practice while working and teaching at HE level. This also included a visit to China in 2014 where he taught life drawing.

Tom is an artist whose work sits firmly within a vast art historical tradition. Heavily influenced by 20^th Century American abstraction, his work treads a tightrope between figuration and abstraction and takes particular inspiration from the work of Richard Diebenkorn.

Tim Barlow graduated from Otago Polytechnic, Dunedin School of Art in 1994 with a DipFA Hons. He has since gained a PhD in Fine Arts from Massey University Wellington in 2017. His research and art practice ranges across an engagement with community and public art, themed attractions and film production, social justice issues and the ethics of local resource use.

Often there is a fun element to his projects such as with The Public Fountain (2012), an interactive geothermal geyser fountain produced for the Taupo Erupt festival. In 2015, he established the Wainuiomata Water festival a water festival staged during times of water restrictions. He recreated Elbe’s Milk Bar (2015) a Lower Hutt milk bar infamous for creating a moral panic in Aotearoa. More recently with Open Source Water-well (2019), he built a shelter that harvested water from air on Waiheke Island.

He has also worked as a prop maker and art director in commercial film production in Aotearoa, UK, and globally. In 2017-2018, he worked alongside Weta Workshop as Head of Content for a new themed museum of Traditional Chinese Medicine in Zhuhai, China. In 2017, he completed a practice-based PhD in Fine Arts from Massey University in Wellington, NZ. 

Limestone, lime plasters and lime concretes, and how lime's been used in art and architecture - that's what Dunedin artist Tim Barlow is exploring in his new project The Lime Burners. Tim received the 2021 Environment Envoy commission to create the work that will be housed in the city's old Gasworks.

For more about Tim's residency project see the Otago Daily Times or Radio NZ.

Amanda Watson's practice explores how environments can be ‘actants’ in the making of paintings, and how the use of gesture and process in painting enables a multifarious and surprising experience of place to be revealed. This is interesting because it suggests that in the ‘give and take’ process a painter submits themselves to, where ‘the life of things and the artist’s own can intertwine’ (Schwabsky 2019, 25*), it is conceivable that painting can contribute to finding new ways to ‘see’ the world.

Read more about Amanda's practice

Dr. Rohan Nicol is a craftsman, designer, academic and curator. His practice and research spans jewellery, silversmithing and design. He holds qualifications from the Australian National University and Charles Sturt University where he was awarded a PhD.

He has been the recipient of numerous awards including the prestigious Bombay Sapphire Design Award as well as funding to conduct research from the Australia Council and Australian Universities. He regularly exhibits his work at peak venues in Australia and internationally.

His work is held in public and private collections including the Powerhouse Museum and the National Gallery of Australia. During his residency he will be producing a series of water vessels to explore the traditions and cultural norms we associate with the domestic table as a platform for altering individual behaviours and practices.

He is looking to employ the philosophical and ethical drivers that underpin Studio Craft and Design to propose new ways of operating that aim to mitigate or prevent the negative impacts of consumption centred in the home. 

2014 SMFA Travelling Fellow Joe Joe Orangias is a visual artist who intersects fine arts, architecture, and critical theory.

Working through history, collaboration, and local material, the overarching goal of his work is to sustain, but also challenge, the cultural identities of certain places as they shift over time. His projects propose equity by sculpting new contexts for social, economic, and environmental inequities.

Orangias holds an MFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston/Tufts University and a BFA from the Savannah College of Art and Design. His work has been exhibited at galleries and on-site throughout France, Germany, Hong Kong, Scotland and USA.

He received an ASA Visual Arts Fellowship from the Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg and residencies at Galveston Artist Residency on Galveston Island, Texas, Art342 Foundation in Fort Collins, Colorado, and Atelier OPA: Original Products & Architecture in Tokyo.

He was awarded the 2014 SMFA Traveling Fellowship to realize a project in New Zealand.

A graduate of the Dunedin School of Art’s P Lab, Tom Ellison was artist in residence in February/March 2016. His project was a collaboration with the senior students Michele Hayward, Kaela Janiten, Kirsty Lewry and Sophie McDonagh with production assistance from Neil Emmerson.

Together they produced a large installation in the Dunedin School of Art Gallery that developed from the use of two discarded plastic pallets as a matrix.

Used in container shipping, these pallets were an interesting blend with one pallet made in Japan and the other in Egypt. 

Find out more

Edwards + Johann artists and collaborators have been working together since 2007. They have been finalists in the juried competition at LACDA, New Zealand Painting and Printmaking Award, Wallace Art Awards and Parkin Drawing Prize.

Dr Victoria Edwards works primarily in new media including drawing and photography. Her work explores role-play and social conventions in relation to individual and collective identity.

German born artist, Ina Johann, uses a range of media from print and drawing to digital stills, photography, video and light to create multi-dimensional installations. Johann has been exploring a form of navigation and mapping in the terrain of survey, observation, and fragmentation. Her work reflects upon emptiness, memory loss, coding and de-coding. 

We welcome,internationally celebrated jeweller, Karl Fritsch and Auckland-based photographer and filmmaker Gavin Hipkins to the DSA in September. (Fritsch Hipkins)

German born, Karl Fritsch, studied at the Goldsmiths' College in Pforzheim and at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. He was the recipient of the Herbert Hoffman Prize from the International Craftsmen Trade Fair in Munich and the Most Promising Award for Applied Art from the City of Munich. Fritsch's work is included in several important European museums such as the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and the Museum fur Kunst und Gewerbe (Museum of Art and Crafts) in Hamburg.

His work is also collected by Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa and MOMA New York. Karl currently lives and works in Island Bay, Wellington New Zealand.

Gavin Hipkins is an Auckland-based artist who works with photography and film. He has exhibited widely in New Zealand and Australia and his works have been included in major curated exhibitions in the USA, UK, Germany, Brazil, and Italy. He represented New Zealand at the 1998 Sydney Biennale and the 2002 Sao Paulo Biennale. In 2010 his 80-part photography work The Homely featured in the exhibition Unnerved: The New Zealand Project at the Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane.

He lives and works in Auckland, New Zealand where he is Senior Lecturer and Associate Head of School at Elam School of Fine Arts, University of Auckland.

Staff at the University of Applied Arts Vienna – die Angewandte – travel with an exhibition „UNDERSTANDING – ART AND RESEARCH“ to the Dunedin School of Art.

Gerald Bast is president of the University of Applied Arts Vienna since 2000. After Studies in law and economics he earned a Doctorate in Law. He is member of the European Academy of Arts and Sciences and board-member of the European League of Institutes of the Arts. As university president he initiated various new programs focusing on cross-disciplinary teaching and research, like “Social Design”, “TransArts”, “Applied Studies in Art, Science, Philosophy and Global Challenges” and a PhD program in art-based research. He founded the “Angewandte Innovation Lab” at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, accentuating the role of the arts in innovation processes by facilitating crossdisciplinary intellectual and aesthetic intercommunication. Bast published in the fields of university management as well as educational and cultural policy and he held lectures on the role of universities and cultural knowledge for societal development at numerous institutions, among them Johns Hopkins University Washington D.C., Columbia University NYC, Tsing Hua University Beijing, TongJi University Shanghai, City University Hong Kong, Lakit Kala Akademi New Delhi, University of Porto, and the European Culture Forum Brussels.

Cornelia Bast is an artist, social designer and art-based researcher at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. She graduated from a Higher Biochemistry School, worked as a midwife at the University Clinic Vienna and earned a BA in Applied Arts and Design Communication and an MA in Social Design – Arts as Urban Innovation at the Angewandte. Her work oscillates between art, design and public performative interventions. Recently she is working in a research project with the title „Dementia.Arts.Society“. She sees art and design primarily as media for social communication. Working in cooperation with non-profit institutions deepen insight into problems and strengthen the impact of her work. She is on the editorial board of dérive – Radio for Urban Research, and has presented her work at various international conferences.

Anna Vasof is an architect and media artist. Born in 1985, she studied architecture at the University of Thessaly (2010) in Greece and Transmedia Art (2014) at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. Since 2004 her videos and short movies have been presented in several festivals, some of them winning distinctions. She’s currently writing Ph.D. thesis at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna about an animation technique that she develops and at the same time working on designing and building innovative mechanisms for producing critical videos, actions and installations.

Konrad Strutz is a visual artist and a senior lecturer at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. Areas of focus in his scientific and artistic work include non-hierarchical spatial representations, and body movement in the context of communication. He received his academic education in fine arts and in computer science from the Vienna Technical University and the University of Applied Arts Vienna, respectively. Konrad‘s artwork is exhibited in Europe as well as overseas on a regular basis. Besides his position as a faculty member and a fellow of the Volkswagen foundation’s program “Arts and Science in Motion”, Konrad is currently involved in the symposium “The Entanglement between Gesture, Media and Politics” to be held in Berlin this year.

Di Tocker holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from RMIT University in Melbourne. She is a Cast Glass artist has 12 years full-time tutoring experience, creating and facilitating courses for glass enthusiasts.

Di has previously taught in Melbourne, Australia and in Hamilton and Palmerston North, New Zealand.

Di Tocker exhibits her Abstract Figurative works in galleries throughout New Zealand.

Malcolm Smith is an Australian artist and art manager based in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. He is one of the founders of Krack!, a print studio and gallery that focuses on critically engaged, technically innovative, contemporary Indonesian printmaking.

Established in 2013, Krack! has worked collaboratively with over 100 local artists to produce works that have been exhibited nationally and internationally. He is currently writing his Masters thesis at Sanata Dharma University, Yogyakarta.

Before moving to Indonesia Malcolm managed exhibition programs in well regarded, publicly funded contemporary art spaces around Australia, including the Australian Centre for Photography, Object: Australian Centre for Craft and Design, and 24HR Art, the Northern Territory Centre for Contemporary Art (now NCCA).

Born in Dunedin New Zealand in 1970, Richard Stratton attended the Dunedin School of Art graduating with a Diploma in Ceramic Arts in 1993.

Shifting to Wellington Richard began working as a tutor and developing his technique in ceramics. Richard’s ceramics have always responded to industrially produced press moulded and heavily ornate 18th century ceramics. Historical form and technique are critical to his works imaginative generation and meaning.

His work has been exhibited widely in New Zealand and overseas and is included in private and public collections notably Te Papa Tongarewa, The Dowse Art Museum and the Real Art Road show.

Jack Tilson holds a MFA with first class honours from Elam School of Fne Arts. His practice is concerned with the production of vessels, both functional and sculptural.

Making intuitively, spontaneously and responding to local materials dictates the aesthetic; an allusion to geological and primordial manipulations. During his residency Jack works with materials from around Dunedin to be fired with ash and iron glazes.

Experimentation on the wheel with found clays refers to traditional craft histories. He focuses on creating contemporary pieces that challenge pre-existing understandings and is concerned with the connection between the body and landscape.

Creating links between people, places, histories and natural resources underpins his actions.

FU Movement - Things We Do for Art: a five weeks contemporary artistic exploration of the artist’s existence, presence, conditions and communications to his surrounding world through the process of research, workshops, discussions, seminars, studio

presentations, actions, community gatherings and public happenings. Born in Inner Mongolia, China. Frank Fu is a performance artist. His work challenges the white box settings of galleries and museums, his endurance performances and interventions examine his identity as an artist, often commenting on the politics of the art world. His work has shown at Venice Biennale, Documenta, Sydney Biennale, Asian Contemporary Art Fair (NYC), Asian Contemporary Art Week (NYC), Rubin Museum of Art (NYC), Centre Pompidou (Paris), Locarno International Film Festival and Vision Du Réel (Switzerland).

Frank Fu has also been featured on networks and publications such as NHK (Japan), CCTV4 (China), ARTCO (Taiwan), The National Business Review, New Zealand Herald, Frieze Magazine, TateShots, etc.

Wi Taepa's interest in clay was sparked by an exhibition of pottery by Jo Munro at the Willeston Gallery, Wellington, which he would recall years later when he was looking for an alternative to wood as a medium of expression. 'I found clay was the answer. I can manipulate the clay into different forms, alter it, take it away or put it back.

I was also introduced to low-tech firing of clay which still intrigues me to this day.' (1) Although clay is not a traditional Māori medium, he believes it is ideal for expressing Maori cultural values. 

Wi Taepa was born in Wellington in 1946. He belongs to Ngāti Pikiao, Te-Roro-o-Te-Rangi, Te Arawa and Te Atiawa. His father, Hohepa,was a Church of England minister and the family lived in Wellington, Otaki and Wanganui, where Taepa studied at Wanganui Technical College. He comes from a line of Te Arawa master carvers.

Read more about Wi's work

Peter Robinson was born in Ashburton and studied sculpture at the Ilam School of Fine Arts during 1985–89. His playful, provocative and ironic works play on the politics of ethnicity and identity. Robinson’s international profile grew through the 1990s, culminating in his inclusion in the 1998 Biennale of Sydney.

In 1999, he left Canterbury to live in Berlin, where he practiced for several years. In 2001, Robinson represented Aotearoa New Zealand at the 49th Venice Biennale alongside fellow Kāi Tahu artist Jaqueline Fraser.

Robinson won the 2008 Walters Prize for *ACK* and was made New Zealand Arts Foundation Laureate in 2016.

Cinelli 250: Ata mārie Ōtepoti is part of an ongoing project by Scott Eady, Dunedin Public Art Gallery’s 2020 Ōtepoti Dunedin artist in residence. This unique residency, which was created as part of the Gallery’s response to the challenges posed by the Covid-19 pandemic, supported an artist in our immediate community to develop new research and work.

Cinelli 250 has been developing since 2018, when Eady purchased a Cinelli road bike and began cycling to work along the edge of Otago Harbour. He set himself the challenge of making 250 trips, equivalent to the price of the second-hand bike. Each morning he stopped at a public bench seat, greeting the day with the words ‘Ata mārie Ōtepoti’ and documenting the rising sun in a black and white photograph. Over recent months, Eady has translated these journeys into a new sculptural installation.

A large-scale neon artwork greets audiences, a beacon of blue and gold light that reaches out into the central city to enquire Ata mārie Ōtepoti, how are you today?

Read more here

Tuafale Tanoa’i, aka Linda.T, is a Samoan-heritage artist based in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland. Using video, photography and DJ-ing, her practice documents and shares community stories, generating a living archive.

Her kaupapa has been described as one that is based on koha – often made with and gifted back to the communities she engages. She has also worked with various organisations from community to government-lead incentives with a special interest in Pacific women’s health and youth. Linda T received a Masters in Art and Design from AUT after establishing a career in local radio, TV and short film.

Linda. T is widely recognised for her contributions to small communities in Aotearoa  through her rigorous and uncompromising chronology as a documenter since the early 1980s.

Read more here 

Yona Lee is the Dunedin Public Art Gallery’s 2020 Aotearoa New Zealand Visiting Artist.

She will spend the summer on residency in Ōtepoti Dunedin, culminating in an exhibition that opens in February 2020. Lee is best known for her large-scale site-specific sculptures and installations which share a language and materiality with urban infrastructure, merchandising displays and architectural design.

This residency will provide time and space for research and development, allowing Lee to explore new ideas and experiment with properties such as line, form, scale and materiality.

Alex Monteith’s works often explore the political dimensions of culture engaged in turmoil over land ownership, history and occupation. Her work traverses political movements, contemporary sports, culture and social activities. Alex’s projects often take place in large-scale or extreme geographies.

Her surfing-related projects connect museum spaces directly to local geography through participatory performance projects. She was born Belfast, Northern Ireland in 1977 and moved to Palmerston Nth, New Zealand in 1987 with family. She currently lives and works in Auckland.

She completed a BFA in Photography in 2001 and a MFA in Intermedia and the time based arts and DocFA at the Elam School of Fine Arts, The University of Auckland. Between 1999 and 2012 actively involved in art discourse through exhibition, panel discussions and gallery floor talks (art galleries, film festivals, TV and radio both nationally (NZ) and internationally).Alex has exhibited solo project Exercise Blackbird Alex Monteith at the Museum of Modern Art Frankfurt (2012), the 4th (2009) and 5th Auckland Triennials (2011), as well as time-based screenings at Centre Pompidou, Paris.

She was a recipient of the Arts Foundation of New Zealand New Generation Award (2008), a Walter’s Prize finalist (2010) and was a board member of Artspace (2012-2015).

She is also a member of the collective Local Time (Alex Monteith, Danny Butt, Jon Bywater, Natalie Robertson), and is a some-time political and environmental activist.

Thai-Australian video artist Kawita Vatanajyankur creates works that offer a powerful examination of the psychological, social and cultural ways of viewing and valuing the continuing challenges of women’s everyday labour.

In her staged performances, Vatanajyankur undertakes physical experiments that playfully, often painfully, test her body’s limits - a challenge that is both unavoidably compelling and uncomfortable to watch. The alluring, luminous colours in Vatanajyankur’s work are distinctive of the artist's aesthetic and tap into a globalized and digitally networked visual language of consumption and instant gratification.

Vatanajyanlur has achieved significant recognition since graduating from RMIT University (BA, Fine Art) in 2011. In 2015 she was a Finalist in the Jaguar Asia Pacific Tech Art Prize and curated into the prestigious Thailand Eye exhibition at Saatchi Gallery, London. In 2017, her work has been curated into 'Islands in the Stream' exhibition in Venice, Italy alongside the 57th Venice Biennale. Vatanajyankur has exhibited widely across Australia, as well as Asia and Europe. Vatanajyankur’s work is held in private collections in Australia, Asia, Europe and America.

She is currently represented by Nova Contemporary, Bangkok / Alamak! Project / Clear Edition & Gallery, Tokyo

Eve Armstrong (b.1978) is a contemporary artist based in Wellington. She graduated with a BFA from Elam School of Fine Arts in 2003, and in 2006 received a New Generation Award from the Arts Foundation of New Zealand. 

Armstrong has a contemporary art practice centred on a formal and research-based enquiry into the surpluses and by-products of urban environments.  Arranging, deconstructing, reassembling and reimagining the potential of everyday objects and modern waste-products, Eve's works promote a reconsideration of the materials that are used and discarded on a daily basis. 

Her on-going Trading Table project encourages social interaction and participation as a means of highlighting alternative currencies and value systems surrounding objects, materials and activities.

Armstrong has exhibited and undertaken residencies nationally and internationally, with work presented at Dertien Hectare, Netherlands (2010), Tarrawarra Biennial (2008), Australia, the 3rd Auckland Triennial (2007), the Busan Biennale (2006) and the SCAPE Art & Industry Biennial (2006). She has completed artist's residencies at McCahon House, Auckland (2009), Asia New Zealand Foundation/AiR Association Limited, Hong Kong (2008), and Enjoy Gallery, Wellington (2005).

Her 2011 project Taking Stock was presented as part of Letting Space, a Wellington public art programme and in 2013 she embarked on a series of artist projects at The Dowse Art Museum, Lower Hutt.

Rebecca Baumann is an Australian artist whose work spans sculpture, installation and performance.

Baumann’s practice has largely been driven by a formal and conceptual exploration of materials, through which she has interrogated ideas around colour, light and time.

She has exhibited internationally, with recent exhibitions including Set In Motion, Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth; New Romance, MCA Sydney; and WA Focus: Rebecca Baumann, Art Gallery of Western Australia (all 2016). Her work is included in public and private collections internationally.

Blaine Western is a MFA graduate from Elam School of Fine Arts, Auckland University. He has worked collaboratively to create architectural interventions exhibited at split/fountain, Snake Pit, Artspace in Auckland and at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery.

His research engages with the relationship between the built environment/architecture and social histories.

Kate Davis (born 1977 in New Zealand) studied at The Glasgow School of Art where she completed a BA in Fine Art (1997–2000) and an MPhil (2000–1).

Selected solo exhibitions include those at: Temporary Gallery, Cologne (2013); The Drawing Room, London (2012); CCA, Glasgow (with Faith Wilding) (2010); Tate Britain, London (2007); Galerie Kamm, Berlin (2007 and 2011); Kunsthalle Basel (2006); and Sorcha Dallas, Glasgow (2004 and 2008).

Group exhibitions include those at: Art Stations Foundation, Poznan, Poland; Tate Britain, London; Museo Tamayo, Mexico City (all 2013); and Eva International 2012, Limerick, Ireland (2012). Davis is a lecturer at The Glasgow School of Art. She lives and works in Glasgow.  

Jae Hoon Lee studied sculpture at the San Francisco Art Institute, United States, then completed his Master in Fine Art at Elam, University of Auckland. Lee's art works are comprised of digitally collaged photography, object-based and video installation.

Lee explores sensibilities and concepts relating to a nomadic experience of the artist in contemporary environments.

Lee references widely different geographical locations in the sources for his digital image-bank as well as making digitally collaged landscapes.

Areta Wilkinson is an artist of Ngāi Tahu descent, a Māori tribal group of Te Waipounamu the South Island of New Zealand. Wilkinson has investigated the intersection of contemporary jewellery as a form of applied knowledge and practice with Māori philosophies, especially whakapapa (genealogies) and a worldview informed by Ngāi Tahu perspectives.

These ideas are articulated in her 2014 PhD Creative Arts with Massey University. Areta Wilkinson’s practice explores whakapaipai concepts of Māori personal adornment in the context of bicultural New Zealand.

She is concerned with histories of contact, tribal knowledge, and drawing maker connections between the cultural production of her ancestors and her own objects.

Her recent work represents an ongoing investigation into the history of Māori wearable taonga (prized possessions) particularly relevant to her iwi community in Te Waipounamu, the South Island where she lives.

Wilkinson’s work is seen in New Zealand public collections and current artworks are exhibited in the 9^th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (APT9) at Queensland Art Gallery Museum of Modern Art (QAGOMA)

Digital video artist Rachael Rakena has exhibited in New Zealand, Australia, China, Italy, Germany, Poland, Lithuania, France, Spain, Britain and the United States. Among other large group exhibits, her work has been included in Pasifika Styles at Cambridge University and in Dateline: Contemporary Art from the Pacific at Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, Berlin.

In 2006, Rachael and artist Brett Graham represented New Zealand at the Sydney Biennale with their collaborative work UFOB. In 2007, their work Aniwaniwa was selected for the Venice Biennale and, in 2008, her work Pacific Washup was included in the Busan Biennale.  In 2009, Rachael’s work was included in the Spanish exhibition FEEDFORWARD which explored how artists are using digital technologies to interpret the world.

Of Māori and Pakeha descent, her inspiration comes from family; she uses contemporary technology, new language and digital media to create artwork that expresses traditional Maori culture and identity.

Few artists need to invent a word to describe their art form, but Rachael did: Toi Rerehiko. Rachael is a lecturer at Massey University’s School of Māori Visual Arts.

Ross Hemera was born at Kurow in 1950.

He earned a Diploma of Fine and Applied Arts from Otago Polytechnic in 1972. Recently retired from his position as Professor of Māori Art and Design at the College of Creative Arts at Massey University in Wellington, Hemera’s works are creative expressions of contemporary Māori pattern, design and imagery, and expand the tradition of Ngāi Tahu visual culture.

Specifically, they reference the ancient imagery of Waitaha, Ngāti Māmoe and Ngāi Tahu within the context of Taonga tuku iho, a process involving the transmission of knowledge within a spiritual framework.

Known primarily for his mixed-media sculptures, he has undertaken significant public commissions; his work has been exhibited in major contemporary Māori art exhibitions, including the American tour of “Te Waka Toi: Contemporary Māori Art”, “Māori” at the British Museum in London (1988), “Te Puawai o Ngai Tahu” at the new Christchurch Art Gallery, “Kiwa-Pacific Connections” (2003) in Vancouver, Canada, and “Whenua-Born of the Land” (2004) in Wellington.

Jasmine Togo-Brisby is a fourth-generation Australian South Sea Islander, whose great-great-grandparents were taken from Vanuatu as children and put to work on an Australian sugarcane plantation.

Togo-Brisby's research examines the historical practice of 'blackbirding', a romanticised colloquialism for the Pacific slave trade, and its contemporary legacy and impact upon those who trace their roots to New Zealand and Australia through the slave-diaspora.

Based in Wellington, Togo-Brisby is one of the few artists delving into the cultural memory and shared histories of plantation colonisation across the Pacific, her practice encompassing painting, early photographic techniques and processes, and sculpture.

Claudia Jowitt is the 2016 recipient of the Tautai Trust / Dunedin School of Art artist residency. She completed a Masters in Fine Art at Elam School of Fine Arts, University of Auckland, graduating in 2015 and has a Bachelor of Art & Design (Hons) and Bachelor of Visual Arts from AUT.

Jowitt’s distinctive abstract paintings are inspired by questions around the potential of painting as an object – an object that suggests a history of its method of construction. She is interested in the process of painting, and how the painterly action can both quietly reveal and hide such history.

In 2008, Jowitt was selected for an international exchange program and accepted into the School of Fine Arts at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Her work has featured in a number of exhibitions in Aotearoa and internationally. 

Jowitt’s work is housed in both public and private collections. 

Kim Woojin’s project ‘Now and Here’ recorded images of scenes and local background sound from daily life in several international cities; Seoul, London, Nagoya, Hong Kong and Dunedin and used juxtapositions to pose questions about our ‘normal’ lives.

These resulted in film and photographic installations and involved collaborations with locals and other artists.

Kyung-joo Kim’s work investigated the structures, movement and flow of time in our urban environments through an interpretation of texts, conversations and relationships interwoven in her ‘sculptural drawing’.

The works she created in Dunedin added to an ongoing series called "Analogue Drawing". 

In association with Blue Oyster Gallery.

Taarati Taiaroa (Ngāti Tūwharetoa | Ngāti Apa | Te Āti Awa) is an Auckland based artist, educator and writer with a research-­based practice that often utilises archives to investigate small narratives, exhibiting histories and systems. Her past research and projects have explored the structures and values of artist-initiated, community based and collaborative practice. She is a graduate of the University of Auckland and holds Masters degrees in both Fine Arts and Museums and Cultural Heritage.

Taiaroa has over seven years experience in devising and delivering arts education, exhibitions, public programmes and community workshops. As a result of her participation in the 2016 Emerging Curators Programme she penned a manifesto of sorts for Conversational Research as a means to reframe the curatorial process to have human relations—people—at its centre.

Lisa Walker is an artist/jeweller/designer working in the area of contemporary jewellery. Amongst many national and international prizes and awards, she has received the Otago Polytechnic Distinguished Alumni Award, the Arts Foundation of New Zealand Laureate Award and the Françoise van den Bosch Award. She exhibits and is involved in projects with museums, galleries, and other venues internationally. She is regularly invited to teach workshops and give lectures. Her work is a study into the differences between an accepted notion of beauty or stereo-type, and something else – the search for a quality that we hardly ever see, but nevertheless perhaps recognise. Walker says "I don't want to make pieces that are easily steered through our established channels, I want people to be forced to work on new syllogisms, analogies and positions." She is continually pushing towards the extreme - a method which enables an expansion in thinking and ways of working.

Walker uses a large range of materials and techniques. She makes reactionary work, consciously active with influences from all walks of culture and life. The pieces are often laced with references to contemporary jewellery of the last forty years, questioning and researching what jewellery means, what it can be. Walker largely positions her work around the history, future, and boundaries of jewellery. She makes pieces for the future. "Everything is food for art". After many years spent living in Munich, Germany, Walker is currently based in her city of birth Wellington, New Zealand.

The Dunedin School of Art welcomes Simon Kaan to the Dunedin School of Art teaching and support team. Simon is working as the DSA Māori student adviser. He is assisting students in finding ways to express bicultural ideas within their art practice, along with supporting Māori students to access wider iwi communities relevant to their practice. 

His role involves active studio engagement with students, forming a sense of whanaungatanga through regular group activities. In a practice that includes painting, printmaking and performance, Kaan is concerned with identity and the physical and metaphysical notions of space and time.  Kaan possesses a refined visual language developed over decades, tied to his sense of personal genealogy (Ngāi Tahu and Chinese descent).

His practice considers the implications of the intermingling of the Kāi Tahu and Chinese elements of his heritage and his ideas are communicated through mythological sites of land, sea and sky.

Adrian Hall was born in Cornwall in 1943 and has worked around art-schools most of his life. He has helped build houses, driven trucks, buses, trolley cars, worked on animated films in L.A, has been a motor cycle courier in London, and been a member of the professoriate at U.N.S.W.

He has worked on events and film for Yoko Ono, improvised music with AMM, London, fabricated for Naum Gabo and spent most of the 70’s trying to make art in Belfast. He has worked with time-based media, and has shown artworks regularly since 1960. Adrian has been an Artist Adjunct since 2011.