Jan White is an artist whose career spans several decades. White began as a painter, exhibiting for some years with Moller's Gallery in Auckland, New Zealand.
In the 1970s White began to work with three-dimensional forms using a variety of materials such as wood, perspex, cast metals, found objects and materials, clay and slate which were usually painted in oil paint once they were constructed. She exhibited with New Vision Gallery and also with R.K.S. Gallery in Auckland.
During recent years White has begun to combine the projected moving image and looped film with found objects in an installation setting.
White actively participates in academic life, taking up invitations to attend and present papers at conferences and workshops both internationally and within New Zealand. She has been the recipient of Major Project and Travel funding grants from Creative New Zealand, the Fulbright Foundation and the University of Auckland Research Committee. Her academic topics of interest and expertise include the symbolism in the kinetic works of New Zealand born New Yorker, Len Lye (M.A. thesis topic), Landscape Themes and their Relation to the Passion Cycle in the work of the New Zealand painter, Colin McCahon (PhD thesis topic).
She writes catalogue essays for other artists, critical reviews for M.I.C., as well as contributing to various magazines from time to time. On occasion White has been invited to curate exhibitions such as the TEXT and IMAGE Exhibition shown at Lopdell House Gallery, Auckland in 2000. She is in the process of organising a new show to be opened at Oxford University in August 2003 which will then travel to key cities in the United States of America.
This exhibition is titled The Sublime Metaphor and it will be held in conjunction with an international inter disciplinary conference at Oxford.
White is planning a new video installation work to be exhibited in 2004 in New Zealand, America and Europe.