Kim Lowe

Kim Lowe is an artist, printmaker and arts educator currently living in Ōtautahi Christchurch. Her arts practice often blends and appropriates Chinese, British and Celtic forms to create hybrid designs steeped in the natural world and Taoist philosophy. She is heavily influenced by her tauiwi ancestral lines, which provide a creative breeding ground for the cross-cultural germination in her artworks. Lowe is of Chinese and Pākehā ethnicity, with patrilineal ties to Seyip through her Cuban-Chinese grandmother and Jun Seng through her grandfather. She also has whakapapa to Ireland, England, Scotland and Scandinavia through her maternal grandparents. Raised in Murihiku Southland, she is a māmā to three children who whakapapa Ngāi Tahu.

Lowe completed a Master of Fine Arts in printmaking at the University of Canterbury School of Fine Arts in 2009. Printmaking is still Lowe’s primary art form, working in woodblock, monoprint, collagraph and embossing. She has also frequently worked in etching and painting. Her artworks involve delicately coloured forms, tapering lines of scritchy ink that resemble calligraphy, traditional Chinese design leitmotifs and inky brushwork of landscapes, invoking flora and fauna on softly textured backgrounds. Curator Kathryn Tsui notes that the medium of printmaking appeals to Lowe’s interest in cultural hybridity, as “printmaking and working on paper connects to European and Chinese art traditions. Even the fundamental act of making prints requires a negative image to create the positive printed image… relat[ing] to the artist’s interest in the Chinese concept of polarity where opposites are necessary to create balance.”

Taoist principles such as duality often inform Lowe’s design principles within artworks, alongside beliefs fostered by Lao Tze Chung (Laozi) that one should live in accordance with nature. Lowe’s hybrid cultural heritage plays a significant aspect in the visual designs, colours and motifs seen in her artworks. “Pākehā and Chinese symbology echo each other; dragons breathe fire that fans into swirling koru-like Chinese forms” describes Ruth Agnew in an artist profile for Takahē when speaking on Lowe’s “marriage of cultures and influences”. British insignia and Celtic knots blend and mix with traditional Chinese patterns and forms such as the Luoshu.

Lowe has exhibited widely across Aotearoa, and internationally including in China. She has also been extensively involved in building spaces for community art and participation across her career. Alongside Simon Kaan and Kathryn Tsui, she helped to establish the Aotearoa Chinese Artists group (ACA) in 2013, which led to the first Chinese New Zealand Artists Hui, an early predecessor of the successive Asian Aotearoa Arts Hui. In 2012 she coordinated Shared Lines: Sendai-Christchurch Art Exchange in Sendai and Shiogama, Japan and the following year, brought over artists from Sendai to Te Waipounamu. In late 2014, Lowe also established Toi Te Karoro (Art New Brighton) in Ōtautahi as a shared workspace for artists and musicians and place for creative workshops, seminars and events.

Lowe cites social and community work as a central element of her wider art practice. In an interview for Stuff, she says that establishing community spaces helped her to realise “...that making art is not just about an exhibition or arts projects. My art is also about all the other things I do as a teacher as well…it made me realise that everything that I do as an artist affects social change.”

Kim Lowe – websiteCEAC Project Space – Exhibition Profile

Eye Contact — ‘The Silence of the Brush’ Review

Hainamana — ‘A Roundtable Discussion with Kerry Ann Lee, Kim Lowe, Amy Weng’Stuff – ‘Sydney Art Fair Filled with Kiwi Artists’

Ko Murihiku Tōku Whaea - Interview about Printmaking and practice with Kyla Cresswell, Emma Kitson and Kim Lowe.

2024 – Ko Murihiku Tōku Whaea, Exhibition and residency at Dunedin School of Art, Ōtepoti

2021 – Ko Murihiku Tōku Whaea, Southern Mother, Pātaka Art + Museum, Porirua

2020 – If Tao is a River, Chambers Gallery, Ōtautahi

2020 – The Silence of the Brush, ILAM Campus Gallery, Ōtautahi

2018 – (M)other, Chambers Gallery, Ōtautahi

2016 – Kim Lowe, Toi o Tahuna Gallery, Tāhuna

2014 – Floating Worlds, City Art Depot, Ōtautahi

2013 – Mrs Chrysanthemum Patiently Waits, Corbans Estate Arts Centre, Tāmaki Makaurau

2013 – Black Swans, Toi O Tahuna Gallery, Tāhuna

2010 – 9 Dragons, Brooke Gifford Gallery, Ōtautahi

2008 – Lattice and Lao Shu, Solander Works on Paper, Pōneke

2007 – Lattice and Lao Shu, CoCA Centre of Contemporary Art Toi Moroki, Ōtautahi

1998 – Lunagraphy, Salamander Gallery, Ōtautahi

2019 – Olivia Spencer Bower Art Award

2011 – Ethol Susan Jones Fine Arts Travelling Scholarship, University of Canterbury

2008 – Bickerton Widdowson Trust Scholarship, School of Fine Arts, University of Canterbury

2007 – Ethol Rose Overton Scholarship, School of Fine Arts, University of Canterbury