Mr Kit (Christopher J.E.) Wise
Nationality: United Kingdom
Year: 1999
Subject Area: Arts and Humanities
Website: Visit (opens in a new window)A graduate of Oxford University and the Royal College of Art, London, Kit Wise undertook a Wingate Rome Scholarship in Fine Art at the British School at Rome in 1999. He subsequently received a Boise Travel Scholarship, which enabled him to travel and study in New York and Australia, before settling in Melbourne in 2002. Since that time, he has received three Australia Council Awards, including curating the international touring exhibition 'Academici: The First Five Years of the Australia Council Rome Studio'; published over 30 catalogue essays, exhibition reviews and book chapters and has written for national and international art journals such as Artlink, unMagazine and Frieze Magazine. He is currently Deputy Head of Fine Arts, the Bachelor of Fine Art Honours Course Coordinator and Coordinator of the Sculpture and Spatial Practice Program in the Faculty of Art & Design, Monash University, Melbourne. He continues to visit Italy regularly, and for the last three years has run a Fine Art studio program at the Monash Prato Centre, near Florence.
Working with found-object based sculpture, installation, digital animation and web-based imagery, in his recent work Wise addresses the increasingly fluid or plastic condition of the art work, the context of art works and the artist in contemporary culture. 'Diderot's Enlightenment concept of the encyclopaedia, as interpreted by Umberto Eco, is used to explore the notion of various forms of language organized as an encyclopaedia rather than a dictionary - dependent on rhizomatic cross-reference motivated by desire, rather than static, hierarchical structures.