This work was gifted to Wellington City Council by the artist Ai Sasaki (b. 1976, Osaka) in acknowledgement of her time in Wellington as the third Wellington Asia Residency Exchange artist-in-residence. This programme has been forging important creative and cultural links between Wellington and the Asian region since 2005 and is supported by Wellington City Council and Asia New Zealand Trust. Each year one New Zealand artist and one artist from across Asia are selected for this 3-month exchange programme.

While in Wellington Ai Sasaki exhibited at Toi Pōneke Arts Centre Gallery. Her gentle white on white wall paintings were astonishingly created using icing sugar as her medium. A workshop with school children in Crofton Downs revealed her construction methods and some of their creations were also exhibited.

In this little print we are shown a perfectly conical snow-capped mountain. For New Zealanders we may see this and think of Mount Taranaki but for Japanese they may think of Mount Fuji, thus portraying a bond of similarity between our mountainous island nations in the Pacific Ocean.

Ai Sasaki completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts at Kanazawa College of Art, Ishikawa, Japan. She won the Kirin Art Award 2002 and has also had artist-residencies in Korea and Australia. She continues to exhibit in group and solo shows across Japan.