Polynesia migration Aotearoa

Polynesian migration Aotearoa 1992 is an early and defining work within John Pule’s oeuvre. Originally commissioned and displayed in the large gallery window at the corner of Wellesley and Kitchener Streets, its presentation coincided with the launch of Pule’s seminal autobiographical novel The Shark that Ate the Sun / Ko e Māgo ne Kai e Lā. Works like this one remind us of Pule’s notable work as a novelist and poet, where his use of language would summon forth subtle and provocative imagery, colours and textures that would coalesce in his drawings and paintings.

Across an unstretched canvas – a loose grid unfolds, its form echoing the structured patterning of hiapo (Niuean barkcloth of the 19th century), anchored by a series of painted vignettes. Within its compartments, crucifixes, spectral sharks, birds, fish, and Christ in mourning trace a fractured cosmology, where ancestral memory and colonial faith collide in a narrative of endurance, rupture, and belief. At its base, the canvas is physically tethered to a strip of hiapo, bound by sāsā (flax), creating a literal and conceptual weaving together of past and present.

- Ane Tonga, Curator Pacific Art l Kaitiaki, Toi nō Te Moana Nui-a-Kiwa, 2025

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