John Pule
Born:
1962 in Liku, Niue
Lives in:
Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand, and Niue
John Pule is a Niuean artist, novelist and poet who lives in Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand. Born in the village of Liku on the South Pacific island of Niue, he immigrated to Aotearoa New Zealand at the age of two in 1964. Pule returned to Niue in 1991 and has since visited regularly. His work is inspired by the history and mythology of Niue and his own experience of migration and identity. He is self-taught and highly inventive, especially in his adaptation of traditional Pacific art forms such as tapa cloth. Pule is also challenging and provocative in his expression of Pacific culture, history, colonisation and migration.
John Pule, Experience, 2021; Ai Manako Au Ke Nofo He Haau A Tau Miti Tukulagi – I don’t want to live in your dreams anymore, 2023. Presentation at the 24th Biennale of Sydney was made possible with generous support from the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain and Creative New Zealand. Courtesy the artist and Gow Langsford Gallery © the artist and Gow Langsford Gallery. Installation view, 24th Biennale of Sydney, Ten Thousand Suns, 2024, Art Gallery of New South Wales. Photograph: Christopher Snee.
Left to right: John Pule, Mercy, 1998; Untitled, 1999; Prototype: site of old myths, 1995. Presentation at the 24th Biennale of Sydney was made possible with generous support from the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain and Creative New Zealand. Courtesy the artist and Gow Langsford Gallery © the artist and Gow Langsford Gallery. Installation view, 24th Biennale of Sydney, Ten Thousand Suns, 2024, Art Gallery of New South Wales. Photograph: Christopher Snee.
John Pule, Untitled, 1999. Presentation at the 24th Biennale of Sydney was made possible with generous support from the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain and Creative New Zealand. Courtesy the artist and Gow Langsford Gallery © the artist and Gow Langsford Gallery. Installation view, 24th Biennale of Sydney, Ten Thousand Suns, 2024, Art Gallery of New South Wales. Photograph: Christopher Snee.
Art Gallery New South Wales
Ai Manako Au Ke Nofo He Haau A Tau Miti Tukulagi – I don’t want to live in your dreams anymore 2023
enamel on canvas
I don’t want to live in your dreams anymore (2023)
collection of 22 poems, digital print on paper
Commissioned by the Biennale of Sydney and the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain with generous support from Creative New Zealand. Courtesy the artist and Gow Langsford Gallery.
Mercy, 1998
oil on unstretched canvas
Prototype: site of old myths, 1995
oil on unstretched canvas
Untitled, 1999
oil on unstretched canvas
Experience, 2021
enamel on canvas
Presentation at the 24th Biennale of Sydney was made possible with generous support from the Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain and Creative New Zealand. Courtesy the artist and Gow Langsford Gallery.
John Pule’s work is deeply informed by the visual language of hiapo, a decorative barkcloth tradition from Niue. In the 19th century, these cloths were distinguished by their freehand nature. Grids and structural patterns within the designs existed alongside new symbols and illustrations of colonial influence, including ships and compasses. Pule’s contemporary works are also characterised by disruptive encounters of past and present, worldly and otherworldly. The realities of missionary colonisation exist alongside imagery of the forests and beaches of his island home.
As a form of cultural cartography, Pule’s work allows the cosmos, oceans and seas, lands, people and the histories of Niue to reveal themselves little by little.