The titles of the three works in this series translate as: Pokia (Together), Tokolonga faoa e loto ne misi (Many people in a dream), Pulenoa (Without consent). John Pule uses his art to explore issues of post-colonialism, cultural identity and the richness of Pacific Island visual and oral traditions. The large circle in the central print refers to harmony and balance in life and Pulenoa refers to colonisation in the Pacific. Lithography has proved to be a very suitable medium for Pule because it’s immediacy suits his expressive style of drawing. He incorporates elements of hiapo (traditional Niuean tapa cloth) but his compositions also contain more personal elements that reflect contemporary life. Born in Nuie, Pule arrived in New Zealand in 1964. He studied art briefly in Auckland and began painting full-time in 1987. He has exhibited extensively throughout New Zealand and the Pacific. He has also taught at workshops in Nuie and Fiji, helping artists from other indigenous cultures to extend their vision beyond their traditions toward a new development in Pacific Island visual arts. Pule is also an accomplished writer who has published novels and several volumes of poetry.

The titles of the three works in this series translate as: Pokia (Together), Tokolonga faoa e loto ne misi (Many people in a dream), Pulenoa (Without consent). John Pule uses his art to explore issues of post-colonialism, cultural identity and the richness of Pacific Island visual and oral traditions. The large circle in the central print refers to harmony and balance in life and Pulenoa refers to colonisation in the Pacific. Lithography has proved to be a very suitable medium for Pule because it’s immediacy suits his expressive style of drawing. He incorporates elements of hiapo (traditional Niuean tapa cloth) but his compositions also contain more personal elements that reflect contemporary life.

Born in Niue, Pule arrived in New Zealand in 1964. He studied art briefly in Auckland and began painting full-time in 1987. He has exhibited extensively throughout New Zealand and the Pacific. He has also taught at workshops in Nuie and Fiji, helping artists from other indigenous cultures to extend their vision beyond their traditions toward a new development in Pacific Island visual arts. Pule is also an accomplished writer who has published novels and several volumes of poetry.

John Pule examines the complex experience of leaving one’s homeland and arriving in another – a reflection on his own migration from Niue to Aotearoa New Zealand. Using the grid-like composition of hiapo, he has developed a symbolic language of spears, migratory birds, sea creatures and geometric patterning that speaks to personal and shared histories of cross-cultural exchange. Here, he also reproduces an eighteenth-century drawing by Raiatean navigator Tupaia, depicting Captain Cook’s botanist Joseph Banks trading with a rakatira from Uawa. It’s an image that complicates our understanding of the dynamics involved in this encounter, and asks us to consider our own place in Aotearoa.

hiapo ~ barkcloth from Niue

rakatira ~ person of high rank, chief, leader

He Kapuka Oneone – A Handful of Soil (from August 2024)

Stephen Gleeson executes portraits of people he knows well and this formal head is of New Zealand artist Joanna Braithwaite. Working from a combination of observation and memory, he has captured her character with a depth of quality and feeling. Gleeson’s work follows in the tradition of bronze portrait busts, a genre that was mastered by such international artists as Jacob Epstein (1880–1959) and New Zealander Francis Shurrock (1887–1977). Bronze is Gleeson’s favourite sculptural material. An alloy of copper and tin, it is a malleable metal to which colour can be added. He began casting bronze portraits in 1981 and they include works of the New Zealand artists John Pule, Neil Frazer and Fatu Feu’u. Gleeson was born in Christchurch and studied at the University of Canterbury School of Fine Arts, graduating in 1982. He began exhibiting in 1978 and has exhibited throughout New Zealand and at the National Portrait Gallery, London. Gleeson’s work is represented in public art institutions in New Zealand and in private collections.

The titles of the three works in this series translate as: Pokia (Together), Tokolonga faoa e loto ne misi (Many people in a dream), Pulenoa (Without consent). John Pule uses his art to explore issues of post-colonialism, cultural identity and the richness of Pacific Island visual and oral traditions. The large circle in the central print refers to harmony and balance in life and Pulenoa refers to colonisation in the Pacific. Lithography has proved to be a very suitable medium for Pule because it’s immediacy suits his expressive style of drawing. He incorporates elements of hiapo (traditional Niuean tapa cloth) but his compositions also contain more personal elements that reflect contemporary life. Born in Nuie, Pule arrived in New Zealand in 1964. He studied art briefly in Auckland and began painting full-time in 1987. He has exhibited extensively throughout New Zealand and the Pacific. He has also taught at workshops in Nuie and Fiji, helping artists from other indigenous cultures to extend their vision beyond their traditions toward a new development in Pacific Island visual arts. Pule is also an accomplished writer who has published novels and several volumes of poetry.

“The sky is second only to the sea as a mass that fills my imagination with awe.” —John Pule

John Pule was born in Niue and at a young age moved with his parents to Tāmakimakaurau / Auckland. He returned to his home country as an artist, poet and writer in 1991. Inventive in his adaptation of traditional art forms, Pule’s work considers Pacific and migrant cultures, often provocatively. In this work, the blue clouds may also be islands. He says:Blue is associated with travel, knowledge, family and scenes from the Bible, but mostly the blue is the Pacific. The Pacific collects and shares all that we know about ourselves. In that period of cloud paintings I incorporated Niue creation stories, islands, the ocean (especially crossing the Pacific going to Niue or from elsewhere to Aotearoa).

(Te Wheke, 2020)