Jane Zusters was born in Christchurch
in 1951. As Jane Arbuckle she was a founding member of the
Christchurch Women's Liberation Movement. In 1973 she completed a
Bachelor of Arts in English before taking up a position as a
teacher at Navua High School in Fiji. Zusters returned to New
Zealand to study at the Canterbury University School of Fine Arts
for two years and in 1975, while still a second year painting
student, exhibited her photographs in the '6 Women Artists' show,
curated by Allie Eagle at the McDougall Art Gallery in
Christchurch. In 1978 she was awarded a major Queen Elizabeth II
Arts Council Grant and moved to Auckland. In 2003 Zusters completed
a Master of Fine Arts (First Class Honours) in Photography at
Whitecliffe College of Art and Design.
Zusters visited Italy in 1984
following her success at the Montana Art Awards. Here, she was
inspired by the artists of Transavante-gardia (Sandro Chia,
Francesco Clemente, and Enzo Cucchi), a band of artists who drew
inspiration for their multimedia works from historical and
contemporary art (Cubism, Expressionism and Surrealism as well as
aspects of Renaissance art and Classicism) and portrayed personal
concerns about the human condition in a manner that resonated
strongly with Zusters. On her return to New Zealand, Zusters
incorporated elements of the Transavante-gardia practice into her
work, melding them
seamlessly with her penchant for photography, the compositional
fracturing of the picture plane and the expressionistic aspects of
collage to create work that dealt generally with relationships (of
both the human kind and the formal, painterly relationship between
elements in a composition) and more specifically with notions of
gender and the role of women in culture and society.
As with the work of the Transavante-gardia, Zusters' fragmented,
layered style refers to the accumulation and accretion of stylistic
elements through history, yet in Zusters' hands this style has a
deeper reference to the handing down (or building-up, as it were)
of cultural imperatives, stereotypes and learned beliefs,
ultimately leaving open to the viewer the possibilities of
interpretation as based upon their own beliefs and experiences.
An established New Zealand artist, Zusters' work is held in
private and major public collections throughout the country and
overseas. The recipient of two prestigious Queen Elizabeth II Arts
Council grants (in 1978 and 1986), Zusters was awarded the Tokoroa
Art Award in 1988 and visited Berlin on a Goethe Institute
Scholarship in 1992. In 1995, Zusters was invited to be a guest
artist in residence at Canterbury University and in 2004 took up
the position as William Hodges Fellow in Southland.