Shark, Angel, Bird, Ladder

This essay originally appeared in New Zealand Art at Te Papa (Te Papa Press, 2018).

‘Dreams were the holy ground from which your ancestors could stand and direct your life, introduce you to visions, symbolic pictures of places, caves, faces, animals, insects; also where they cry and lament, laugh and run, bring rain and storms, set canoes adrift, destroy gardens and homes, take children, leave messages in stone.’1

This passage from John Pule’s first novel, The shark that ate the sun of 1992, provides a narrative for the dream-like nature of his recent ‘cloud paintings’. These works mark a transition from his earlier style, inspired by the visually dense compositions of hiapo (Niuean bark cloth), to more open canvases dotted with clouds of colour that float across them.

Shark, angel, bird, ladder is a large work filled with clouds of olive green and black paint. Adding to the surreal cloudscape are small, detailed drawings of decapitated birds’ heads, mountains, fantastical creatures and circular hiapo motifs that create small pockets of narrative.2 Pule chose the sky and cloud formations because of their strong presence in the Bible. As he states, ‘The sky is second only to the sea as a mass that fills my imagination with awe. I see this space as a sort of backdrop to a place that is ideal, you know, a place that is full of metaphors for social change.’3

The sense of change in the painting is reinforced by the tendrils of ti mata alea, a Cordyline plant that is associated with oral histories of the origins of the Niuean people. Within the context of the work, the plant symbolises the concept of life and growth and the process of firmly taking root. The plant also holds a personal narrative for Pule that relates to his family’s own migration and the Niuean plants they brought with them when they established a new home in New Zealand.4

Nina Tonga

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Here, small hybrid creatures – birds, lizards, people, monsters – move between twining plants and large green clouds. The fragile environment they inhabit is both terrifying and strangely beautiful.

Pule’s ‘miniaturist graffiti’ draws upon the Niuean art form of hiapo – bark cloth illustrated with cultural stories. But not all the figures here are from Niuean mythology. Some are born from John Pule’s imagination, and the scenes they act out include calamities and sexual couplings. Through them, Pule perhaps suggests the upheaval and adaptation that come with migration and the influence of the West.