Elam International
In October, Shift / Enter was the first group show of multicultural students at Elam School of Fine Arts, projectspaceB431 Gallery. Each artist who participated in Shift / Enter – a potential seedling – is able to relate to the term 'diaspora', as all have encountered a form of dispersion from an original homeland. Such transition requires a significant level of physical and psychological adjusting and blending into the new discovered environment. Look for this show in Elam's online Creative Showcases.
Jin Jiangbo, our next international visiting scholar, is often referred to as one of China's new generation of media artists. Equally drawn to new media, which "connect art and technology", and to photography, which is both objective and "sensitive enough to capture small traces of this fleeting world", Jin Jiangbo is best known for his panoramic photographs of abandoned factories and silent market halls. He was in New Zealand in 2009 as the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery's International Artist in Residence and to exhibit his work in China in Four Seasons. Earlier this year, Starkwhite exhibited Jin Jiangbo's Shanghai, Ye! Shanghai, one of a recent series of projects that investigates the past 20 years of economic, social and cultural upheaval that has taken place in China since 1989. Jin Jiangbo joins Elam in December and will be with us until March 2011. He is very keen to work with Elam students at the start of Semester 1.
Jonathan Mane-Wheoki has been invited to speak at the South African Visual Arts Historians/Comité International d'Histoire de l'Art (CIHA) conference at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, January 2011 . His paper is included in the panel 'Modernist Primitivism and Indigenous Modernisms: Transnational Discourse and Local Art Histories'.