Artist Profile: Justin Kite
Ngati Kahungungu/Chinese
Mixed Media Artist

Ngati Kahungungu/Chinese
Mixed Media Artist
My current paper works are heavily influenced by Maori and Chinese culture including my ‘fan format’, script and blue and white porcelain artworks. I gained a Bachelor of Visual Art and Design from The Eastern Institute of Technology.
Graduating in 2004 I completed my Post Graduation Diploma in teaching Secondary Art and Art History. I have taught Visual Art and Design in New Zealand and Shanghai, China for 14 years. Living and working in a range of different countries has been a major stimulus in my art-making process. I enjoy playing with the relationships and visual hierarchy of silhouettes and internal narratives to achieve contradictions and surreal worlds. Taking observations of diversity and everyday situations. I play with the multi-layers of societal contexts, attempting to highlight the complexities and randomness of post-modern life.

New works on plywood are combine, mixed media works with subject matter and narrative inspired by pop culture such as games, music lyrics and media. I also like to explore visual conventions such as scale, contrast, and movement. I try to capture melodrama, with figurative and the abstract. I often integrate my Māori culture; every work is a self-portrait.
I hope that the viewers appreciate my art, whether it is aesthetically or on a deeper level.
“Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time”.Justin Kite