Kim Lowe is an artist, printmaker and senior academic at Ara Te Pūkenga in Ōtautahi Christchurch. She studied Printmaking at the Dunedin School of Art in 1996, completed a Masters in Fine Arts at Ilam Art School Canterbury University in 2009, and was the recipient of the Olivia Spencer Bower Award in 2019. Kim’s work is about whakapapa and incorporates elements from the natural environment with her Chinese ancestry. 

Simon Kaan (Chinese, Ngai Tahu and Pakeha) is a printmaker, painter, performance artist, curator, spatial designer, surfer and self-confessed foodie. In 2004 Simon Kaan was the first New Zealand artist-in-residence to Red Gate Gallery Residency in Beijing. His performative projects, under the Kaihaukai Collective, investigates the bringing together  of community, history and food, while his interest in the significance of sites and Māori advisory role in the conceptualisation of various architectural developments in his hometown of Dunedin and also Christchurch, feed directly into his role as Deputy Chair of Paemanu: Ngāi Tahu Contemporary Visual arts, a network of Māori artists.

Kathryn Tsui is a contemporary textile practitioner based in the Coromandel Peninsula, New Zealand. As well as being a practicing artist (with a Bachelor of Visual Arts from Auckland University of Technology in 2007), she has 17 years of experience in exhibition curation, gallery management and arts trust administration. In the past two years her textile work has featured in exhibitions throughout Aotearoa, New Zealand and in Australia including: Ā Mua: New Lineages of Making the Dowse Art Museum, (2020); The Search Party at McCahon House (2022); Soft Landings at Page Galleries in Wellington (2022), Text Tile at Caves Gallery in Melbourne (2022) and redwhiteblue at Masterworks Gallery (2023). Tsui's work is in the public art collections of Tūhuroa Otago Museum, Dowse Art Museum and University of Waikato -Te Whare Wananga o Waikato.

AAA 10-year Anniversary Founders Kōrero

Panel talk and Presentation

Wed 4 October, 5-7pm

The Pit, Level B, Te Ara Hihiko, Block 12
Massey University Wellington, Pukeahu Campus

This special kōrero with founding organisers Kim Lowe, Simon Kaan, Kathryn Tsui, Amy Weng and Kerry Ann Lee took place on the occasion of the 10th Anniversary of the Asian Aotearoa Arts (AAA) Programme.

AAA is a result of a decade of sustained creative conversations and collaboration both locally and nationally. The first gathering — the Chinese New Zealand Artists Hui was organized by artists Simon, Kim and Kathryn at Corbans Estate, Auckland in 2013, while the first Asian New Zealand Artists Hui was organized by curator Amy Weng at Te Tuhi in Auckland (2017). Over the past 5 years, artist Kerry Ann Lee has led the programme at Toi Rauwhārangi College of Creative Arts at Massey University, Wellington.

This roundtable discussion considered how we create independently and collectively as a network of Cantonese, Pakeha, Māori and Asian Tauiwi friends. It also explored how artist-led initiatives, intergenerational and cross-cultural knowledge exchange through art and design, evolves over time.

Read our last conversation published in Hainamana here

FREE and all welcome. Space capacity is limited.

Click here for campus map

Click here for Block 12 Building map

 Amy Weng is an art writer, editor and curator based in Ōtautahi Christchurch. She is the founder of Hainamana, a website dedicated to Asian New Zealand contemporary art and culture, and has contributed to a number of local and international publications. She was the organiser of the inaugural Asian Aotearoa Artists Hui in 2017, and has curated projects at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, Te Tuhi, RM, Meanwhile Gallery and Window Gallery. She is currently Curator at The Physics Room, and Associate Editor at Contemporary Hum.

Kerry Ann Lee is a visual artist, designer, scholar and educator from Pōneke Wellington, where she is Associate Professor at Toi Rauwhārangi, College of Creative Arts at Massey University. Lee’s research explores settlement and transformation occurring in the Asia-Pacific region from a diasporic Cantonese perspective. As well as being Creative Director of the Asian Aotearoa Arts programme, Lee also founded the Red Letter Distro. She is well known for her work with independent publications and fanzines over the past two decades, regularly working and exhibiting both nationally and internationally.