Petri Saarikko. Courtesy of the artist.
International Connections: A panel discussion on the role and dynamics of international artist residencies.
Artists Kerry Ann Lee (NZ) and Petri Saarikko (Finland), writer Damien Wilkins (NZ) and theatre practitioner Uta Plate (Germany) explore international artist residencies—what are the benefits and experiences for the artists, and what are the key considerations and opportunities for organisations offering international residency programmes?
The panel also consider the four associated programmes: Massey University’s Te Whare Hēra Wellington International Artist Residency, residencies offered by the Goethe Institut and Asia NZ Foundation, and the Katherine Mansfield Fellowship in Menton. Chaired by Jodie Dalgleish.
International Connections is presented in partnership with Wellington City Council City Arts.
About the Artists:
Damien Wilkins is the Director of the International Institute of Modern Letters at Victoria University. He is a novelist, short story writer and poet. His books have won a number of prizes including the New Zealand Book Award, a Montana Award and a Whiting Award. He has also written scripts for television and is a songwriter. He is a New Zealand Arts Foundation Laureate. In 2008, Wilkins was the Katherine Mansfield Fellow and spent the year living and working in Menton, France.
German director and educational theatre practitioner Uta Plate is the Goethe-Institut New Zealand 2015 Artist in Residence. With a specific focus on young people, particularly those from marginalised groups and communities like asylum-seekers, prisoners and those in social care, Uta has been working on theatre projects in Germany and around the world for twenty years. Her work combines improvisation, movement and writing to help inspire young people to create work that is relevant and meaningful to them and their own experience. Her work has taken her around Europe, to South America, China and Palestine.
Kerry Ann Lee is a visual artist from Wellington, New Zealand. With a background in graphic art, she uses both traditional and digital media to create installation, print and image-based works that meditate on themes of home, difference, and hybridity. Lee’s work has explored urban settlement and culture clash occurring in the Asia-Pacific region in particular Chinatowns. In 2009, Lee was the inaugural Wellington Asia Residency Exchange (WARE) artist-in-residence at island6 Art Centre Shanghai; and in 2012, Lee was the inaugural Asia New Zealand artist-in-residence at the Taipei Artist Village in Taiwan.
Petri Saarikko is an artist and designer based in Helsinki, Finland. He combines societal commentary with his human-computer interaction profession and curatorial background, which results in long term social interventions. Petri Saarikko came to New Zealand in early February, with partner and artist collaborator Sasha Huber, for a five month artist residency at the Te Whare Hera live-work residency suite on Clyde Quay Wharf. Since 2011, Saarikko has been running ‘a living social space’ called Kallio Kunsthalle as part of his home and Elokolo community centre for marginalised people. Kallio Kunsthalle has facilitated long term performative collaboration between international artists, non-artists and people living on the edge of society from third world citizens to paperless asylum-seekers and youth.
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