Artists in the South Pacific

John Pule is the foremost contemporary visual artist of Pacific Island descent. He is also the first Pacific artist to be the subject of a major monograph and retrospective exhibition. Born in Niue, 1962, Pule is a writer as well as a visual artist. He has published numerous collections of poems as well as two ground-breaking novels, The Shark That Swallowed the Sun (Penguin, 1992) and Bury My Head in Heaven (Penguin, 1998).

 A major survey of his work, ‘Hauaga (Arrivals)’ (curated by Gregory O’Brien and Aaron Lister for City Gallery Wellington) opened at Christchurch Art Gallery in February. The exhibition then travels to Auckland Art Gallery and Dunedin Public Art Gallery. Pule’s works are held in all major public institutions in New Zealand as well as in the Queensland Art Gallery, Australia, and the National Galleries of Scotland. He has represented New Zealand and the Pacific region in numerous exhibitions and art events around the world. Hauaga—the art of John Pule, ed. Nicholas Thomas, was published by Otago University Press in 2010. Pule co-authored, with Thomas, Hiapo; the past and present of Niuean backcloth (University of Otago Press, 1997).

Robin White (born 1946) is one of New Zealand’s greatest visual artists. Of Maori descent, she was born in Te Puke and has strong family ties to the Tauranga region—a geographical location significant within the greater ‘Kermadec’ picture.
 
Robin White was one of the most prominent painters of the 1970s, producing numerous iconic New Zealand images.  She subsequently lived on the island of Tarawa in the Republic of Kiribati for some years before returning to New Zealand. She is now based in Masterton but continues to work with weavers and artists from the Pacific.

White’s recent work is an astonishing amalgam of Palangi (Pakeha), Maori and Pacific influences. As well as collaborating with weavers, she continues to make prints, draw, paint and take photographs.
She is represented by Peter McLeavey Gallery, Wellington, and her works are included in public collections around New Zealand and, significantly, in the Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, and the National Gallery of Australia.

A study of her paintings, Robin White: New Zealand Painter, was published by Alister Taylor in 1981. She has represented New Zealand at numerous international exhibitions, and, in 2003, was made a Distinguished Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit. For younger generations of New Zealand artists, White is a role model par excellence, a kuia, an exemplary artist in every respect.

Fiona Hall (born 1953) is one of the most accomplished and internationally acclaimed contemporary Australian artists. Her work has been featured in many biennales and international art events over the past two decades.

After establishing herself as a photographer in the 1970s and early 1980s, Hall began working increasingly as a sculptor and installation artist. In recent years she has added video and printmaking to the media she uses. Major works by Hall are in collections throughout Australia. In 2005-6, a retrospective exhibition was shown at the Queensland Art Gallery and the Art Gallery of South Australian (with an accompanying monograph by curator Julie Ewington).

In 2008, a major survey exhibition (curated by Vivienne Webb, Paula Savage and Gregory O’Brien) was shown at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, and then at City Gallery Wellington and Christchurch Art Gallery. In the past four years Hall has returned to New Zealand regularly and made significant works relating to the bird life, botany and environmental issues of this country.

From Paradisus Terrestris... A series of these works, made from sardine tins, are on long-term display at the Australian National Gallery. In the gallery’s visitor surveys these works are consistently voted the most memorable works in the entire gallery. Hall’s work engages with the environment, with genetics and evolutionary science—it also references vast sweeps of human history. The works are also an account of her inner life—of states of mind and emotion; they are a meditation on the life and death of body and mind. Fiona Hall often uses detritus from the modern world, which she reconfigures into birds’ heads, plant-forms or parts of the human body.

PAINTER: John Reynolds (born 1956) is one of the most celebrated and widely exhibited artists of his generation. His art is often infused with a sense of grandeur, mystery and abstract thought—yet such qualities are always offset by a characteristic playfulness and wit. His dazzlingly large-scale works convey states of mind – immersing the viewer in complex visual environments. Reynolds’ Cloud, comprising over 7000 canvases, was a stand-out work at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, where it was featured in the Sydney Biennale in 2007.

A documentary about John Reynolds’ art, Questions for Mr Reynolds, was directed by Shirley Horrocks and screened in festivals around New Zealand in 2007. A major monograph on his work, Certain Words Drawn; John Reynolds Continued, was published by Godwit in 2008. He exhibits at Sue Crockford Gallery, see below:

The Kermadec region has long fascinated John Reynolds. He notes that there are Kermadec Nikau Palms outside his Auckland studio, and he planted them there.

Reynolds’ recent art incorporates large-scale abstract compositions, word-based pieces (such as the example above), video, installation and performance.

SCULPTOR: Elizabeth Thomson (born 1956) is a Wellington-based sculptor/installation artist, whose work has often engaged imaginatively with the Pacific region. As a young artist, she lived on the Christmas Islands for six months and her experiences there shaped her artistic life.

Thomson’s work has strong connections with biology, physics and other areas of science. She has produced considerable work in collaboration with a scientific glass-blower. She has also produced major commissions which engage with the depths of the ocean—one such work is installed in the aptly titled Kermadec Restaurant, Auckland (which also, in passing, features a major tapa-installation by John Pule). Her school of cast-metal fishes, ‘The Fearless Five Hundred’, is installed in the Fonterra building in Auckland.

City Gallery Wellington staged a major survey of Thomson’s work ‘My Sci Fi My Hi Fi’ in 2006. The exhibition toured to Auckland, Rotorua, Hamilton and Dunedin. She currently has a mayor installation on display at the Tauranga Art Gallery

PHOTOGRAPHER/DOCUMENTARY FILM-MAKER: Born in 1948, Bruce Foster is one of the foremost photographers to emerge in the 1970s. His colour photographs of the 1980s are among the iconic images of that period and his works are held in major publication collections around the country.

Foster has also worked with print media. In 1994 he collaborated with writer Lloyd Jones on a book, The Last Saturday (published by VUP), and an exhibition of the same title which was held at the National Library in Wellington.

In recent years he has worked as a freelance photographer and increasingly engaged with moving image technologies. He is co-director of the Wellington-based design and video production company, Airplane.

In 1999 he made a short film around the New Zealand String Quartet’s performance of Beethoven’s ‘Quartet in E Minor’.

POET, ARTIST, ESSAYIST AND CURATOR: Gregory O'Brien was born in Matamata New Zealand, in 1961. A Wellington-based writer and painter, he has illustrated his own poetry books and written two publications introducing art to young people, Welcome to the South Seas (AUP, 2004) and Back and Beyond (AUP, 2008). His other books include After Bathing at Baxter's - Essays and Notebooks (VUP, 2002) and News of the Swimmer Reaches Shore (Carcanet U.K./VUP, 2007).

Between 1997 and 2009 he was a curator at City Gallery Wellington, where he worked on exhibitions (with accompanying books) by Ralph Hotere, Rosalie Gascoigne, Colin McCahon, Laurence Aberhart, John Pule, Fiona Hall, Elizabeth Thomson and others.

Recent projects include two major monographs, Euan Macleod—the painter in the painting (Piper Press, Sydney, 2010) and A Micronaut in the Wide World; the imaginative life and times of Graham Percy (Auckland University Press, 2011.  He writes regularly for Artist Profile magazine (Sydney) and PN Review in the UK, amongst other places.

O’Brien’s visual works often incorporate texts—his own poetry and that of others. In recent months, he has made a series of 12 etchings with John Pule (printed by Cicada Press, Sydney). He exhibits his work at Bowen Galleries, Wellington, and Jane Sanders Art Agent, Auckland. O'Brien's poems and drawings were the basis for a winter fashion collection from Auckland designer Doris de Pont in 2006. His art is included in the following collections: the Hocken Library, Otago University, Dunedin; the Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington; the Ministry of Foreign Affairs collection; University of Auckland Art Collection and the Chartwell Collection, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki.