A private commission completed in 1985, Hanly’s monumental work Vacation was completed in the months after the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior. This event fuelled even further his passionate demands to ensure the Pacific had a Nuclear Free future. As much as Vacation depicts a very personal perspective of Hanly’s practice, Vacation must also be considered in light of his work with VAANA (Visual Artists Against Nuclear Arms) and the large scale public murals he executed during this dynamic period. An early advocator of ‘think global act local’, Hanly’s paintings deal with key global issues, whilst also exploring the effects of these problems on individuals. In doing so, he created a family of figures, referring to them as if they were a couple that he knew personally. This couple, often accompanied by a child, feature repeatedly throughout Hanly’s work and make an appearance in Vacation. Unusually however, the two figures - man standing and woman seated - are separated by a brilliant, clear expanse of white, through which the ‘hope vessel’ sails. This space bring to mind a distinctly South Pacific phrase ‘va’ meaning the in-betweeness or space that connects people. Bright and free with finely orchestrated colour and line, Vacation boasts some of Hanly’s most recognisable emblems that featured predominantly in both earlier and later works. The winged dove, the triangular hope vessel or ark and the abstracted figures work as a personalised short-hand, expressing both his anti-nuclear sentiment and the importance of the family. As a domestic mural, the large scale of Vacation is unprecedented in Hanly’s oeuvre. The piece functions as a mini-manifesto visually expressing his political and social viewpoints, his environmental beliefs and his artistic language during the mid 1980s. Alongside the potent themes addressed in Vacation, lies a virtuoso handling of paint and colour. The vibrant shades of blue, yellow, green and orange have been masterfully offset against one another to achieve an energetic and harmonious scene. Moreover, Hanly’s idiosyncratic wielding of the brush gives the work an additional level of enticement. The immediately apparent flurries of paint are juxtaposed with an intimacy that is seen in the handling of the figures, which highlights and underscores the compositional balance of the work. NEIL CAMPBELL