Source: Eastern Institute of Technology – Tairāwhiti
16 mins ago
Anthony Chiappin, a Graphic Communications Senior Lecturer, is also the programme co-ordinator for EIT’s suite of design offerings.
The experience of teaching an EIT programme in Digital Communications to Chinese students has stimulated an IDEAschool lecturer’s artistic research.
Anthony Chiappin, a Graphic Communications Senior Lecturer, is part of a team of three NZ Design lecturers that deliver EIT’s Bachelor of Creative Practice in China. His own qualifications are a Bachelor of Design and a Masters in Visual Art from Australia’s Monash University.
His dual focus these days is teaching EIT’s Bachelor of Creative Practice at Zhejiang Yuexiu University (ZYU) in China, and into the domestic programmes in New Zealand. The Chinese teaching has consisted of firstly online and now over in China, face to face with the students.
It was during his visits to China that Anthony, who is originally from Australia, felt his creativity receive a new lease on life.
“I’ve had two stints in China, a total of four and a half months.”
The last one was just over two months with him returning home in late April.
Anthony, who has been at IDEAschool for 13 years and a researcher for even longer, says research is very important to him.
“I call it the sacred feather in the boa of continuation and connection with things that are important to your teaching, but also important to your career and to the work that you’re doing.”
“It’s been an amazing journey. While I was in China, I took the opportunity to do some artwork and I really ripped into it. In the ZYU apartment I had room to work and it was the first studio that I’ve been able to work in since the cyclone.”
The work he produced there is his China “Episode” Series. He is hoping to get some funding to be able to exhibit the work in China next year.
Asked how Chinese taste in art differed from that in the West, Anthony said China has a very strong cultural base.
“Even in a contemporary sense. There’s a lot of dialogue around the state of China where it’s at currently, but there’s a lot of cultural significance within the work, whereas the Western model is quite different in that sense.”
He says his art form moves between figurative and abstract, with abstract currently taking hold.
“I call my paintings ‘Episodes’. I see them as an ongoing narrative, kind of like a comic book journey where I use superhero narratives within what I do, based on suburban mythologies.” This dialogue certainly comes to play a part within my teaching practice.”
“It was a fantastic eye-opener to be flung into the epicentre of a more provincial city like Shaoxing.”
A point of difference for this work is that he is using Chinese cardboard packing boxes with colourful motifs as the base for his paintings.
“It is quite powerful because the motifs are proudly ensconced within the work. I had worked on boxes in my master’s series years ago, but it just seemed like a natural fit to be able to grab these boxes from the supermarkets on campus, in particular, and use that as the basis to the work.”
“I used four of the paintings, where I call them ‘The Philosophers’. I was influenced by a lot of the works that I was seeing around Zhejiang province and Shanghai as well. But in particular, the beautiful ink paintings by some of the calligraphers and artists in that region from 200 years ago. It was a bit of a mishmash of all this influence being flung at me because China’s overwhelming.”
Anthony says that at present his main focus is China, be it writing, teaching or researching.
It has been a rewarding experience for him, as last year he won “The Overseas Teacher of the Year Award” along with seven other teachers in many other disciplines at the University.
Another project that he is particularly proud of is one involving his wife, Nikki Gabriel, who is a textile designer and holds a Masters of Art & Design from AUT and is a current PhD Candidate at RMIT University, Melbourne. Nikki has just had a book called Construction Knitting published by Bloomsbury Academic Press, London.
“It’s about designing, but knitwear design with geometric shapes is the premise to that. So it’s been an eight-year journey to get that to the point where it’s now published and out in the world.”
Anthony says he was responsible for the photographs and illustrations, with art direction and content by Nikki.
“That’s been a huge part of my research over many, many years. And now that it’s published, I can talk about it as a research project.”
Acting Head of EIT’s IDEAschool Sue Blackmore said: “EIT is encouraging and supportive of the research endeavours of all EIT lecturers and Anthony’s new series of work inspired by his time in China is very exciting.“
“The team of Bachelor of Creative Practice and Bachelor of Computer Science lecturers that travel and work in Shaoxing are amazing ambassadors for EIT and NZ in China.”
