End of Year Exhibition 2023: Celebrating innovation by design
Professor Robyn Phipps, Dean of Te Wāhanga Waihanga-Hoahoa—Wellington Faculty of Architecture and Design Innovation, invites the entire community to the Faculty’s End of Year Exhibition (EoYE) for 2023.
Hosted at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington's Te Aro campus is open from 9 am–5 pm, Friday 3–Friday 17 November.
Professor Phipps says she looks forward to the EoYE every year, and 2023 is no different.
“It’s a time for us to ‘show-off’, to invite our community behind our walls that they may walk past every day and say, ‘Hey, look at the incredible, innovative work our students are capable of.”
She says she encourages everybody to attend, from prospective students to potential employers.
“Future students can get a taste of the work they’d be doing and the life they’d be leading here; industry leaders and creatives can canvas new talent or keep up to date with fresh thinking and trends.”
The exhibited works range from first-year projects to postgraduate research, displayed in the atrium at the heart of campus as usual—but this year, the Faculty is focused on highlighting the work of its School of Design Innovation.
Head of the School, Nan O’Sullivan, says the design school considers the EoYE a special event for the School's staff and students to share a crowning moment and give students their time in the spotlight.
She says that design has expanded and changed significantly over the past decade.
“It is a fluid, expansive, and collaborative industry, and the time to see design as the conduit for multi-disciplinary collaborations is well overdue.
“The diversity of careers our students undertake is both impressive and exciting. Quite uniquely, our students align their creativity, curiosity, digital competency, and collaboration and communication skills with a strong sense of belonging, turangawaewae, to both people and place.”
She says that as design professionals, graduates bring an understanding of accessibility, inclusivity, and possibility to the table, helping communities and industry create better futures.
Among the exhibited works is Pūriri by third-year comics and graphic novels major Kelly Chang—a touching comic from the perspective of our forests’ “creepy crawlies”, published in zine format.
“Pūriri moths only get two days in their moth bodies after six years as larvae, so my comic explores this brief timespan,” Kelly says. “I’d love to make more comics with NZ’s ‘uncharismatic’ wildlife as central characters.”
In Tadaima (meaning ‘I’m Home’ in Japanese), communication design major Edith Hopkinson explores mixed Asian stories in New Zealand, told through short-form interviews, and presented in zine format with a blend of illustration and graphic design.
“As a Japanese-New Zealander who grew up primarily on the West Coast of the South Island, I remember feeling greatly influenced by a sense of internalized racism and a desire to ‘match’ the community I found myself in,” Edith says.
“Tadaima is about this experience of growing up as a mixed Asian person in rural New Zealand. The intentionality behind this book was to communicate stories of mixed-race identities in NZ and contribute to wider representation in New Zealand media.
“Though the themes in this book are certainly not universal, I feel that they may be applicable to many New Zealanders with immigrant roots.”
Ruby Millard, also a communication design major, explores how knowledge of our grandparents’ working lives might affect the way that we as young adults begin our own careers in Where have they been? Where are we going?
She says the book explores the lives and relationship between four sets of grandparent and grandchild, including her and her own granddad.
“I focused on the grandparents' working lives and how the grandchildren’s relationships with their respective grandparent throughout their own lives have influenced their aspirations and how they view their future.
“The stories that I collected really inspired me. Each one was extremely special, and I feel honoured that they allowed me to attempt to tell their stories. I hope that anyone that reads my book can be encouraged about the impact that we all can really have on each other's lives when we encourage and love one another.”
The visual research interview project is bound by hand in a limited edition risograph print run of 22 copies.
“I designed all the content, printed it at university, and bound it myself, giving me so much control over the entire process and every single copy of the book. Risograph printing always has little imperfections—it’s unique. It doesn't translate into a digital format and it’s something special and tangible that you can hold in your hands.”
An online version of the exhibition accompanies the in-person event. It showcases students’ videos, design boards, photographs, and digital artwork from 2022 and previous years.
More information about the End of Year Exhibition can be found on the Wellington Faculty of Architecture and Design Innovation website.