Key Collaborators
Linda Lee - Creative Director
Ngāti Kuri, Ngāi Takoto, Te Rarawa, Te Aupōuri, Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Raukawa.
Arts producer and artist based in Te Whanaganui-a-Tara, Wellington, NZ. Lee holds an MFA in Fine Arts (University of Canterbury) & Graduate Diplomas in Event Management & Teaching. She has taught in New Zealand and abroad at both tertiary and secondary levels.
Linda was creative producer of the Asian Aotearoa Arts Hui 2018 and has worked in production roles with TEZA: Porirua, Common Ground Public Art Festival, Hutt Winter Festival, Political Cutz & Yuka Oyama's Te Wharehera residency.
As an artist of mixed descent, Linda’s art practice explores identity, researching & reinterpreting family histories through exhibition, installation & book form. Over the past five years Lee has engaged and developed a practice around Māori Indigenous Art and Te Reo. In addition, she researched Disaster Management through Massey University to strengthen the capacity of Shared Lines.
Aya Takada - Co-Founder
Birdo Flugas Shiogama, Miyagi Prefecture, Japan
Takada is a graduate of Emily Carr University of Art + Design in Vancouver, Canada. While in Vancouver, she contributed to the online magazine SHIFT as a local arts correspondent.
In 2006 she founded Birdo Flugas gallery, which was established to build networks between artists & communities. It offers off-site workshops and events as well as a programme of exhibitions.
Aya has contributed to Shared Lines Collaborative as a key connector, translator, facilitator and curator between Japan and New Zealand artists since 2011.
Her role as director of Birdo Flugas is accompanied by her involvement at the Sugimura Jun Museum of Art and editor of a local community website www.kurashio.jp
Aya is also a member of the Arts and Culture Advisory Committee in Miyagi and received a Letter of Appreciation for Achievement from the city of Shiogama in 2011.
Takada will be our main contact in developing future international relations (Covid-19 restrictions allowing).
Kim Lowe - Co-Founder
Kim Lowe is an artist, printmaker and educator based in Ōtautahi Christchurch whose work often draws on her NZ Chinese ancestry for inspiration.
She currently lectures at Ara Institute of Canterbury in the Creative Industries, and has initiated and participated in many community-building projects including Shared Lines Sendai: Christchurch Art Exchange; AChA and AAAHui18; Thinking of Place I,II & III international print exchanges; and Toi Te Karoro a shared print studio in post-quake New Brighton.
Kim completed a MFA in Printmaking (University of Canterbury) in 2009 and was the Olivia Spencer Bower Award recipient 2019.
Audrey Baldwin - Co-Producer
Based in Christchurch, Baldwin graduated from Ilam School of Fine Arts in 2009. Since then she has operated as an artist, curator & event producer in both public and gallery spaces. She has shown work in galleries & festivals around New Zealand as well as Japan, India, Zimbabwe, Australia & The Netherlands.
In 2019, her large-scale community engaged project Touchstones, commissioned as part of the Scape Public Art programme, brought together over 400 participants. In 2021 she will be the creative director & head curator for the Morni Hills Performance Art Festival - an internationally attended festival in its third iteration in Northern India.
Collaboration and bringing communities together are key concerns in her artistic and curatorial practice. Her active roles in The Social artist collective, Shared Lines Collaborative, Glitterbox Pursuits and The Physics Room Contemporary Art Space see her strengthening & enlivening communities while encouraging deeper public engagement with art.
Ngaroma Riley - Co-Founder
Te Aupouri, Te Rawara
Ngaroma Riley is a project coordinator, people connector and artist of Te Rarawa, Te Aupōuri and Pakeha descent. She holds a degree in design from the University of Otago. Living in Sendai at the time of the 2011 Great Eastern Japan Earthquake, Ngaroma was an initiator and project coordinator of the Shared Lines: Sendai-Christchurch Art Exchange.
She has recently returned to NZ after 12 years of living and working in Japan. During her time in Japan she was chair of a Japan-based kapa haka group which developed relationships with Japan’s indigenous peoples: the Ainu and Ryukyu Islanders (Okinawans). She has exhibited with indigenous artists in Tokyo and Hokkaido and is passionate about strengthening indigenous art connections at a community level.
In 2019, she worked as consultant for the New Zealand Māori Arts and Craft Institute (NZMACI) to provide support and cultural advice during their exhibition, Tuku Iho, held in Tokyo and Hokkaido.
Mark Amery - Advisor & Mentor
Mark Amery has worked extensively as an an arts advisor, public space curator, editor, writer and broadcaster over the last 30 years, with a keen interest in developing artists and their work across artforms in public space outside the gallery.
He founded an independent pubic art organisation Letting Space for the last 10 years with Sophie Jerram, which founded space brokerage the Urban Dream Brokerage nationally and previously worked at City gallery Wellington and with Artspace Auckland. He was a founding member of the Wellington City Council's public art panel for many years, and has worked with many local authorities. His work with vacant space began in Auckland in the early 1990s as a response to the then recession. He works currently as a producer and presenter for RNZ's arts show Standing Room Only, and a love of art on radio began as producer/presenter of 95bFMs Culture Bunker for five years 1990-95.
Mark is coeditor of The Spinoff visual art section and edits an arts new bulletin for The Big Idea, The Lowdown. Mark is passionate about local community work, helping found the Paekakariki Community trust, founding as programme manager Paekakariki 88.2FM and as managing editor of new community web platform www.paekakariki.nz.
Co-Producers
Mirabel Oliver - Shared Lines Christchurch Sendai Art Exchange
Dr. Andrew Paul Wood - Shared Lines Christchurch Sendai Art Exchange, Shared Lines: Wellington
Adrienne Millwood - Shared Lines: Wellington
Kedron Parker - Shared Lines: Kaikōura
Amber Clausner - Shared Lines: Kaikōura and Shared Lines: Pūtahitanga