The Hynds Foundation and Gillies MetalTech are excited to welcome John Ward Knox and Motoko Kikkawa to Ōamaru. The residency location in Ōamaru’s heritage precinct provides a unique context for the artists that is both industrially and historically immersive. The repurposed foundry pattern shop has been developed for the artists to offer private studio spaces, and also have opportunities to build connections locally and with visitors enjoying the heritage precinct.

Ward Knox and Kikkawa follow on from the first artist residents, Sian Quennell Torrington and Karen Aitken. Together they were selected as the inaugural participants of the programme, which was launched by the Hynds Foundation and Gillies MetalTech foundry last year.

Motoko Kikkawa was born in Tokyo, Japan, in 1968 and after obtaining a degree in Philosophy at Nihon University, moved to Dunedin over 20 years ago. Graduating from the Dunedin School of Art in 2010, she has been a vibrant part of the local and national art scene from the outset, as her myriad solo or collective shows, residencies, and performances up and down the country attest, in both public and private spaces. A prolific visual artist primarily creating highly detailed works on paper, Kikkawa is also unafraid to test boundaries, genres, and new materials (including video, kirigami from old wallpaper, kelp, clay, and mushroom spore tests). She is a talented violinist who regularly plays with various formations and her music-making reflects her approach to art: she listens intently, picks up moods and keys, finding harmonies and atonal notes that suggest new pathways to explore.

John Ward Knox is an artist living and working from Karitane, Ōtepoti Dunedin. Working within a broad range of mediums and techniques, Ward Knox’s work expresses material lightness and conceptual depth. Ward Knox is represented in numerous public collections including Chartwell Collection, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki; Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth, and Hocken Collections Uare Taoka o Hākena, University of Otago.

Karen Aitken’s time in the residency saw her bring focus to the microscopic, beautiful world of Ōamaru diatoms, and their anthropological and geological place in the Waitaki District. Sian Quennell Torrington’s body of work was inspired by foundry processes as a metaphor for transformational experiences.

An exhibition of Ward Knox and Kikkawa’s works will be held toward the end of their 16-week residency period.