Artwork Information

By combining Polynesian motifs with European silhouettes and designs, John Pule creates a highly personal image that works like a painted memory of the experience of emigrating from Niue to New Zealand. Here, identity is a product of exploration both within one’s own memory and through reflecting on familial history.

‘What is perhaps most remarkable about John Pule’s paintings – that really has no precedent in either traditional Polynesian art or in modern western genres – is their fusion of cosmology, cartography, biography and corporeality.’