Past Residents

Residents Map

Past Resident
2014: Meg-Multiforms, The Gallery Apart

Alice Schivardi

Alice Schivardi is interested in collecting stories and establishing human relationships, leading her toward a pursuit of the other as well as of the self.  She focuses both on the natural and human condition, using technological and manual language. Schivardi’s work explores social phenomena and their logic, with a methodology that treasures the intimate exchange of micro-experiences. The threads of her “embroidery drawings” become a link between the artist and the stories, the artistic process and the finished artwork. Alice Schivardi lives and works in Rome.

Past Resident
2013: Wallace Arts Trust

Yuki Kihara

The title of Yuki Kihara’s new body of work, Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?, is lifted from a large-scale painting by Paul Gauguin completed in 1897 shortly before he died in Tahiti. Kihara uses these questions to frame her examination of Samoan culture and society following the tsunami of 2009, last year’s celebration of the 50th anniversary of Samoa’s independence and, most recently, the destruction caused by Cyclone Evan. Taking inspiration from a late 19th-century photograph Samoan Half Caste by New Zealand photographer Thomas Andrew, Kihara dons a Victorian mourning dress and appears as her alter-ego ‘Salome’ photographed in selected locations across Upolu island Samoa that are pointed allusions to the social, religious, economic and political issues the artist wishes to highlight.  Referencing the staged photographic postcards of the ‘South Seas’, Salome’s lone figure stands as silent witness to scenes of political, historical and cultural importance in present-day Samoa. She turns the camera on her country’s colonial past, the impact of burgeoning globalisation, ideas of indigeneity and the role of government in an independent Samoa. Kihara “unpacks the myth” of her country as an untouched Pacific paradise as seen through the eyes of colonial powers and tourist photographs.

A native of Samoa, Yuki Kihara is an interdisciplinary artist whose work has been presented at Asia- Pacific Triennial; Auckland Triennial and the Sakahàn Quinquennial. Kihara’s first solo museum exhibition in North America entitled Yuki Kihara; Living Photographs (2008-09) was held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York following the acquisition of her works by the museum for their permanent collection. Kihara’s works and performances has also been shown internationally at de Young Museum, San Francisco; Museum of Contemporary Art, Australia; Te Papa Tongarewa Museum of New Zealand; Zendai Museum of Modern Art, Shanghai; Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, Taiwan; National Museum of Poznan, Warsaw; Centro Ricerca Arte Attuale, Italy; Rautenstrauch Joest Museum, Colonge; Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin; Musée du quai Branly, Paris; Trodheim Kunstmuseum, Norway and National Gallery of Canada. Kihara’s most recent mid-career survey exhibition entitled Undressing the Pacific presented at the Hocken Library will tour several NZ institutions throughout 2013/2014 organized by the University of Otago, NZ. A publication on Kihara’s work is currently being edited by art historian Erika Wolf.

Past Resident
2012: ACC - Asian Cultural Council

Ambie Abaño

Ambie Abaño’s shift from painting to printmaking brought her to an exploration of the medium as she investigates portraiture in relation to both material and process. From two-dimensional prints, her experimental works led to the creation of portraits and figures in sculpture, mixed media works, and installations, always with an element of traditional printmaking processes.

Ambie Abaño (born Manila 1967) abandoned the practice of architecture in favor of being a visual artist. She exhibits widely in the Philippines and across Asia. Abaño is a faculty member at the University of the Philippines College of Fine Arts. For the past six years, she served as president of the Philippine Association of Printmakers and remains active in their training program. Her solo exhibitions include: SurFACE (2011); Sanctuaire des memoires (2012) at the Alliance Francaise de Manille, and TransFIGURATION at the Cultural Center of the Philippines (2006). She participated in A/P: Analog Playground, Ateneo Art Gallery, Manila; The Speaking House, Kerala, India (2012); Asian International Art Exhibition (2007-2011), and Open Studios at Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris (2011).