Wellington artist, Kerry Ann Lee remembers demolishing wonton at the Shanghai Restaurant, falling asleep on the chairs of the Gold Coin Café in Willis Street while her parents closed up, and hearing stories of the Favourite Milk Bar, her grandparents' business in Newtown. Memories and images come together in her upcoming exhibition, Home Made: Picturing Chinese Settlement in New Zealand, which opens on 20 February at Sew Hoy Gallery, Dunedin.Wellington artist, Kerry Ann Lee remembers demolishing wonton at the Shanghai Restaurant, falling asleep on the chairs of the Gold Coin Café in Willis Street while her parents closed up, and hearing stories of the Favourite Milk Bar, her grandparents' business in Newtown. Memories and images come together in her upcoming exhibition, Home Made: Picturing Chinese Settlement in New Zealand, which opens on 20 February at Sew Hoy Gallery, Dunedin.Kerry Ann creates 'playful and conversational' worlds out of paper, scalpel and glue. Her collection of paintings, collages and paper-cuttings explore personal and local experiences of both the Chinese face behind the takeaway counter and the home customs housed behind the plastic ribbon curtain. At the centre of the exhibition is a lavishly illustrated artist book solely comprised of cut-paper, paint, found text and images - a kaleidoscopic tale told from a third-generation Kiwi perspective.

Along with her involvement in community art education and commercial design projects, Lee is known for her work in underground publishing and punk fanzines over the past decade. A limited edition of the Home Made artist book will be available for purchase at the exhibition.

This articulate and heartfelt body of work was first exhibited in Wellington at Toi Poneke Gallery in August 2008 and gathered national attention with feature appearances on Asia Down Under and Saturday with Kim Hill. Paper-cuttings from the exhibition showcased as a finalist work in the Wallace Art Awards 2008 at The New Dowse Art Museum, while artworks from Home Made have been selected for display at the residence of the new Ambassador to China in Beijing. Kerry Ann has also recently been chosen as the artist-in-residence at the Island6 Arts Centre in Shanghai, China.

Kerry Ann's family originally settled in Otago, yet this will be her first visit to Dunedin: "I am extremely excited to visit and learn more about my own heritage, which Home Made feels very much like scratching the surface of in many ways."

Home Made: Picturing Chinese Settlement in New Zealand opens at 5:30pm on Friday 20 February and runs until 13 March at Sew Hoy Gallery, 29 Stafford Street, above Sew Hoy Oriental Foods. An artist talk is scheduled for 6pm, Tuesday 24 February and is open to the public.

Home Made is proudly sponsored by Asia New Zealand Foundation, New Zealand China Friendship Society, Otago and Southland Chinese Association, New Zealand Chinese Association and Dive Otago.

For further details please contact:

Kerry Ann Lee - mob: 021 033 3166, email - kerryannlee@gmail.com
Chris Whalley, Sew Hoy Gallery - tel: 03 477 3688, email: yafnegg@hotmail.com

16/02/09