Suzette Major, right, with Geraldine Guy at the East West exhibition. Photo by Virginia Winder.

Art adopts a new direction in the East West exhibition,bringing together two regions and two tertiary art educators sharing the same latitude but on opposite sides of the North Island.

Showing at New Plymouth’s Puke Ariki ‘knowledge centre’ until mid-December, the joint exhibition features 10 works by arts staff from EIT
and WITT (Western Institute of Technology at Taranaki).

EIT Head of School, Arts and Design, Suzette Major says East West was a far bigger and more significant exhibition than she might have imagined.

“The ‘conversation’ about the arts is all too often between Auckland and Wellington. What is happening here is that we are looking at the other
axis – the relationship between east and west rather than north and south.”

Staff from the two institutes prepared for the exhibition over 12 months,communicating mainly through video conferencing.  As well as solo artist works, some exhibited pieces are collaborations involving staff at one or other institute while others are collaborations between academics across the two institutes.

Participating artists responded creatively to the theme, juxtaposing, for example, concepts of Mäori mythology and spiritual notions of place
alongside European ideas of mapping and location, and exploring notions underpinning eastern and western religious ideologies.

It is the first time the tertiary institutes on either side of the North Island have put together a joint show. WITT art department head Geraldine Guy said an open brief was one of the reasons the exhibition worked so well. Dr Major said it was vital for EIT to work with artists from other areas.