Artwork Information

Waking up to My Polynesian Spine is a key achievement in the history of contemporary Pacific art at Auckland. It was painted in Christchurch while the artist was working at the University of Canterbury having received the MacMillan Brown Residency.

The painting brings together the confronting issues resulting from Samoan immigration to New Zealand. It contrasts ideas about Pacific diaspora, the 1974 Dawn Raids in South Auckland that demanded the repatriation of Pacific ‘over stayers’. For New Zealand born children of Pacific immigrants it was a time of cultural rejection based on an unlawful interpretation of law.