John Pule moved from the tiny island nation of Niue to New Zealand in 1964 and grew up surrounded by the multicultural community of Grey Lynn. It was not until his first visit back to Niue in 1991 that he began to explore the Niuean tradition of painting on bark cloth, or hiapo. John Pule's works deliberately echo these early examples, of which Hopo Viki is a more recent example. His paintings are intensely personal illustrations of a nation irrevocably changed by the arrival of the missionary. They are personal visions from a displaced Niuean attempting to understand and interpret events that shaped the lives of his family and the wider community.Hopo Viki has moved on from the traditional compositional elements of tapa and tatau. The grid is absent, the composition freer, and the two panels of repetitive narrative present ideas throughout the wider composition. The six nebulous blue spheres that mirror one another in the two canvases appear almost like floating clouds: globulous blocks of colour that link the panels and bring depth and a three-dimensional quality to the work. The vertical black leafy vines create a sense of fluidity which is further enhanced by the dripping of excess paint from the blue areas. Emerging from the vines are finely articulated renderings of vegetation, executed in ink rather than paint, which add a delicate component to the more assertive objects in the piece. Scattered throughout the work are illustrations that act as mnemonic aids to literal and abstract concepts: groups of people ˜congregating around various structures and small churches, alongside landform silhouettes and illustrations effortlessly stripped from the New Testament. The entry of Christ into the Pacific was for Pule "a dark subject, even though Jesus is supposed to generate light. The Christian message undermined traditional beliefs, affecting every aspect of life from dress to sexual practice. These references to the Christian missionary's influence on Niue are juxtaposed against more traditional Niuean representations of nature: birds consuming fish, mountains, semi-monstrous creatures and geometric shapes which are stamped across the surface. The journey, both logistical and spiritual, speaks of an intensely personal experience. Sarah McCrory