Showcase 2025 – Ivan Lupi, Francis van Hout, Lulu Zeng

Lulu Zeng is an Ōtautahi Christchurch based artist. Her painting practice explores the heterocultural interplay between Eastern and Western poetry, particularly through the nuances of translation.
Within the Sound of Silence draws inspiration from imagist poetry and the concepts of Taoism and Buddhist emptiness. Painted through gestures akin to Chinese calligraphy, each stroke echoes an inner voice of the poem. Nothing is spoken. Silence here is not absence but transformation — a space where meaning dissolves and reforms, where seeing almost becomes hearing and emptiness takes on a presence of its own.
I’m within the sound of silence.
Can you hear me?
– Lulu Zeng, 2025

Francis van Hout is an Ōtautahi Christchurch based artist whose paintings, though often planned digitally, retain humanistic, painterly details, such as in the deliberate retention of brush strokes and variations in the surface which balance the digital visual language with geometric abstract oil painting.  He calls these pieces ‘Fusion works’ as they are formed of different elements across art history and his own paintings. Painted using handmade paint from materials found in and around Christchurch, earthen colours reference early traditional art and craft. Inspired by WW1 naval camouflage and the works of 20th century op artists, van Hout reworks abstract drawings “painted with the ‘Dazzle’ pattern as to camouflage or to confuse the viewer of what they are looking at and to find or aim at what these shapes are or could be.”  – Francis van Hout 2025

Ivan Lupi is an internationally renowned Ōtautahi Christchurch based performance artist who has performed and exhibited across the globe since 2001. Born in Ferrara, Italy, Lupi has been living and working in Aotearoa New Zealand since 2016. For their works in this exhibition Lupi continues their focus on durational meditative practice and exploration of surface and identity.
The pieces are part of a series called Pure becoming where the size of the medium (charcoal) determines the length of the continuous line. Each piece is the result of a meditation using a blindfold.
– Ivan Lupi, 2025