Born in Niue, John Pule immigrated to Auckland from the small Pacific nation at the age of two in 1964. He is a self-taught artist and his earlier works were largely figurative and word based. It was not until his first trip back to Niue, that he began to collect visual inspiration from the Pacific and develop works such as 4 Mahalo, which have become his most celebrated body of work. The composition and style of 4 Mahalo draw from the Pacific tradition of tapa cloth or hiapo. In replacing the naturally dyed barkcloth for a canvas, Pule has given a revered ancient craft its place as a credible art medium. Basic geometric and linear patterns give the work an instant likeness to tapa cloth and its geographic origin. The grid-like compositional framework, also adopted from the tapa tradition, lends itself to a narrative reading which presents each isolated motif and scene as part of a collective whole. History and mythology are of special interest to Pule and in 4 Mahalo he uses a blend of traditional motifs and heightened symbolic scenes to illustrate a personal response to the Pacific’s past. A sense of anguish and helplessness is created through the mythical rendition of a lizard held by its tail in a bird’s beak. A large ominous bird-like figure pierces through the predominately dark left-hand side of the canvas and appears to be in the process of engulfing, or to have the ability to engulf, the images, objects and creatures below. Three figurative panels are dispersed amongst the typical tapa patterns and mythological animals. The largest and most central, a group crowded around a recumbent figure, is a variant panel seen in other similar works by Pule. A church steeple peeks over the horizon line under the dominant sun, pointed at by one of the crowd. Another variant frame from other works shows two fishermen who also stand in front of a church tower which has almost faded into the distance. However, the meanings of these panels and their religious content are left ambiguous in that both hope and despair can be read from them. It is through this ambiguity that, despite the strong Pacific influence in the style and subject of 4 Mahalo, Pule is able to draw out an emotive response from viewers from any cultural background. SARAH THEOBALD