INFO
| Name | Kathryn Tsui (she/her) |
| Born | 1977 |
| Country of Birth | Aotearoa |
| Place of Residence | Te Tara-o-te-Ika-a-Māui Coromandel |
| Ethnicities | Chinese (Cantonese) |
| Dealer Gallery | Masterworks Gallery |
| Artform | Visual arts, Craft/Object |
| Decades Active | 2010s, 2020s |
ABOUT
Kathryn Tsui is a textile artist who works primarily in weaving. She also works as an arts programmer and coordinator and was one of the organisers of the first Chinese New Zealand Artists Hui in 2013.
Tsui’s artistic practice began in the mid-2000s, and she graduated from AUT University in 2007 with a Bachelor of Art and Design with a specialisation in Sculpture. During this time, she worked at McPherson Gallery, followed by Studio One Toi Tū, before becoming the Exhibition Manager and Curator at Corban Estate Arts Centre in Tāmaki Makaurau, a position she held from 2012 to 2016.
In 2013, Tsui was working with artists Simon Kaan and Kim Lowe to present an exhibition of their work. Together, they organised the first Chinese New Zealand Artists Hui to coincide with the exhibition. This was the first in a series of gatherings of Asian artists, including the 2018 Asian Aotearoa Arts Hui, a month-long festival held in Pōneke Wellington.
Along with her partner and their child, Tsui moved to Tairua in Te Tara-o-te-ika-a-māui Coromandel in 2016. Since moving, she has worked as an arts administrator and coordinator for the Mercury Bay Art Escape Trust and a school art tutor and artist mentor for Creative Coromandel. It is also during this time that she began to explore weaving, which is now her primary form of practice. In her studio at home, Tsui has two floor looms and a table loom. She has said that “the pictorial effects of weaving patterns and techniques are for me closely related to painting and sculpture.” As well as being interested in the history of weaving, Tsui says that she is “drawn to the universality of weaving, and increasingly it is a medium I employ to respond to issues affecting contemporary society.”
The works that she creates for exhibitions in art gallery contexts reflect this engagement with contemporary issues. Her 2023 solo exhibition redwhiteblue, featured woven and beaded works that mimic the blue, red and white woven nylon shopping bags which are common around the world and originated in Hong Kong. There, they are sometimes called ‘amah bags’ in reference to amah, the domestic workers who carry them. Tsui aims to highlight the relationship of the weaving pattern to domestic labour, as well as the global ‘migration’ of the pattern from its tartan origins to the Asian markets where it is commonly found.
The amah bag was also the subject of earlier embroidered works by Tsui and her mother, Doris Tsui, where the domestic labour of amah workers was alluded to by the many hours of embroidery carried out by Tsui’s mother to recreate the pattern. As curator and writer Bronwyn Lloyd has remarked, “redwhiteblue builds on Tsui’s thinking over a number of years about notions of value and the way in which time and labour-intensive craft activities like embroidery, cross-stitch, and weaving so often dovetail into ideas about inequality, exploitation, and the unsung and undervalued labour of women in the home.”
In June 2024 Tsui's exhibition cloud ribbon opened at Objectspace in Tāmaki Makaurau. Beaded works and woven wall hangings reflect on "intersections of Asian and European cultural histories" — pulling together the influence of blue and white pottery and the homes and studio spaces of the preceding generation of Aotearoa Asian artists such as Guy Ngan, Ron Sang and Wailin Elliott.
Alongside these works made for art contexts, Tsui also creates limited editions and undertakes weaving commissions. Her work is part of the collections at Tūhura Otago Museum, the Dowse Art Museum and the University of Waikato.
LINKS
Key works / presentations
2024 — cloud ribbon, Objectspace, Tāmaki Makaurau
2023 — CLOTH, Masterworks Gallery, Tāmaki Makaurau
2023 — redwhiteblue, Masterworks Gallery, Tāmaki Makaurau
2022 — Text Tile, Caves, Melbourne, group exhibition
2022 — The Search Party Project, McCahon House, Tāmaki Makaurau, by Brownyn Lloyd, collaborating weaver
2022 — Soft Landing, Page Galleries, Pōneke, group exhibition
2021 — Flirting with form: Works by TOI AKO artists, Hastings Art Gallery, Heretaunga, group exhibition
2020 — Ā Mua: New Lineages of Making, The Dowse Art Museum, Te Awakairangi ki Tai, group exhibition
2019 — Labour of Body, Corban Estate Arts Centre, Tāmaki Makaurau, group exhibition
2019 — Art Store, Cement Fondu, Sydney, group exhibition
2016 — Subsets: Sets and Pairs from the University of Waikato Art Collection, Calder & Lawson Gallery, University of Waikato, Kirikiriroa, group exhibition
Key awards
2023 — Artist in residence, Driving Creek Pottery
