Te Papa recently commissioned local artist Kerry Ann Lee to make a new work for the light boxes in the Whare Toi / Art Studio space in Nga Toi / Arts Te Papa on level 5.  Her work Knowledge on a beam of  starlight  is conceived of as ‘The Incredible Dream Zine Machine’ – and invites visitors to make a drawing or other creative response to the work, such as their own fanzine or do-it-yourself magazine. To extend this invitation for creative responses beyond the walls of the museum we invited Kerry Ann to lead some workshops in local schools.

Earlier this month, Year 10 students at Wellington College and Wellington High School enjoyed the opportunity to meet and work with Kerry Ann. She began by showing them examples of her practice which traverses the fields of contemporary art and design. She then introduced them to the concept of zines. Zines or fanzines are fantastically varied: Typically they are a hand-made small circulation self-published works on paper, often taking the form of a booklet filled with original or appropriated words and images which can be reproduced on a photocopier. She showed the students some example zines and took them through a step by step process to quickly create a zine booklet from an A3 piece of paper.

To make her light box work Kerry Ann trawled through thousands of free images on Te Papa’s Collections Online. So when working with the students she invited them to do the same, and encouraged them to repurpose a random selection of images from this vast collection; cutting and collaging them, drawing over them, and adding their own text to create original art in the format of a zine.

If you would like to participate in a zine-making workshop, Kerry Ann Lee will be leading two at Te Papa – Saturday 29th November and Saturday 6th December 1-4pm. The workshops are free but space is limited. Contact artevents@tepapa.govt.nz or call 04 381 7423 to register.