Exhibitions from the Confucius Institute Art Collections

The art space, located on Level 3 in the Main Library on Kelburn campus, is jointly launched by the University Library and the Confucius Institute at Victoria University of Wellington to showcase visual art by contemporary artists in and outside China who respond creatively to Chinese culture, history and society.

2016

Landscape | mindscape

Landscape | mindscape is an exhibition juxtaposes two suites of photographic works: Feng Bin’s Hutong at Night (2005), large brooding nightscapes of the vanishing old neighbourhoods of Beijing, and Lee Ka-sing’s Z FICTION (2008), intricate mindscapes based on the fictions and legends of the past, yet each with a narrative arc towards the future. When viewed together, these two works enter into a dialogue, their surreal qualities mutually intensified until a lucid moment arrives, like the end of Zhuang Zi’s butterfly dream.

2015

Comfort Zone

Comfort Zone is a personal journal, tracing unfamiliar places, brief encounters and fragments of time, with a warmth and generosity like Wellington on a nice day by Wu Wing Yee. The Exhibition runs from 30 July to 18 December on Level 3 in Kelburn Library.

Red

This exhibition runs from 26 February to 30 June 2015. In this exhibition, a suite of eight photographs,by Madeleine Slavick, entitled RED, is juxtaposed with one of Madeleine's poems, also entitled 'red'. Each line of the poem subtitles one image, as word and image comprehend and comment on each other.

2014

Five Senses and the Hollian Thesaurus

The inaugural exhibitions, Five Senses and The Hollian Thesaurus, running from March to the end of June 2014, feature two suites of photographic works by a pair of Hong Kong-Canadian artists, Lee Ka-seng and Holly Lee.

Dynasty and Zoo

The second series of exhibitions, Dynasty and Zoo, running from August to the end of October, 2014, features two mixed-media artists, Han Xu and Wang Hung-Fei who create photo-based works that pay homage to traditional ink-wash painting.