Exhibition: Ioane (John) Ioane, Poly Wants a Cracker

Media Release
Friday 27 APRIL
For immediate release

Ioane (John) Ioane is aware his upcoming exhibition Poly Wants a Cracker will raise a few eyebrows, but the Auckland based artist welcomes debate around the issues of Pacific Island sexuality.

Open to the public from Saturday 28 April until Sunday 10 June, at the Deane Gallery City Gallery Wellington, Poly Wants a Cracker features a powerful installation on loan from The Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa’s permanent collection.

The exhibition has a ‘Contains Explicit Material’ warning as Ioane’s work deals with the sexual stereotypes and morals imposed on Pacific Island cultures through colonialism.

A senior practitioner of Pacific art, Ioane describes his work as ‘poetry’ that draws on various artistic forms, including his own body. Viewing each body as a work of art harks back to his Samoan take on the world. “To be Samoan is to be human. My flesh belongs to a particular society in the world but my soul belongs to the unremembered flow and gardenia graves scented in treasures not of the tide of any surrounding age.”

Born in Christchurch to Samoan parents Ioane returned to Samoa at nine months before settling in Aotearoa aged 6, “Initially, not knowing any English, drawing became my way of communicating and my escape. My philosophy of life, from that time on, has been grounded on those five formative years in Samoa. Ironically 49 years later, still learning, I use art to communicate and escape.”

This Deane Gallery installation, first exhibited at the Sydney College of Arts Gallery in 2002, features pink sex toys festooned with Polynesian flower lei. A large central mannequin, a hula boy named ‘Sale’ with a chiselled Western jaw, stands among these objects recalling 1950s stereotypes that still carry weight of the Western notion of ‘the Pacific’.

The title Poly Wants a Cracker plays with the language and standards imposed on Pacific cultures by colonizing Western powers; ‘Poly’ meaning Polynesian and ‘cracker’ a derogatory expression for white males. Originally referring to an ‘outlaw’ or ‘poor white person’ in parts of Southern U.S.A, ‘cracker’ is also a food item introduced to the Pacific by Western traders.

Curator of Māori and Pacific Art at City Gallery Wellington, Reuben Friend asserts that Ioane places these sexualised objects on display as both challenge and memorial. “On one hand he presents the male body as an arousing commodity that gets packaged and sold. Yet on the other, the dismembered appendages create a sense of unease, as if they have been lopped off and mounted like big game trophies. It’s a powerful and thought-provoking exhibition.”

“Ioane is also referencing thousands of mea sa, sacred male organs that were cut off carved figures throughout Polynesia by early European missionaries. Seeking to civilise the Pacific through Christianity, missionaries taught Polynesian people to perceive the human body as a source of sin, something that should be covered to prevent temptation. From these teachings came the tiputa, the Polynesian poncho, and the touristic grass skirt—garments that offer little function in a tropical climate.”

Friends continues, “The main irony of the situation is that Pacific people are now often more conservative than the European nations that imparted these values on them.”
Poly Wants a Cracker explores these shifts in cultural values and belief systems as Pacific communities in New Zealand and abroad, undergo massive social change.

Artist Biography
Ioane (John) Ioane gained a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Elam School of Fine Arts at the University of Auckland in 1985 and a Diploma in Teaching from the Auckland College of Education in 1986. He held his first major solo exhibition at the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki in 1999. In 2009 Whangarei Art Museum presented John Ioane: Journeyman, Artist and the Pacific Paradox, the first major survey of Ioane’s work. Ioane has exhibited extensively in New Zealand and internationally and has works in major collections including those of the University of Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, England; the Tjibaou Cultural Centre, Nouméa, New Caledonia; the National University of Samoa; the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Wellington; Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki; Pataka Museum of Arts and Cultures, Wellington; the Wallace Arts Trust, Auckland and the University of Auckland Art Collection.

Public Events:

Opening ceremony
6pm, Friday 27 April 2012
Poly Wants a Cracker by Ioane Ioane
City Gallery Wellington, Civic Square

Artist talk
1pm, Saturday 28 February in the Deane Gallery
The artist will be giving a talk about his work in conversation with Curator of Māori and Pacific Art Reuben Friend

Images for media use:

Ioane (John) Ioane, Poly Wants a Cracker (2002), mixed media. Image courtesy of the artist, Whangarei Art Museum Te Manawa Toi and Ellen Smith. Collection of the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa

This image of a copyright artwork is supplied under limited Copyright Licence, for the purpose of producing publicity material for City Gallery Wellington. Under the terms of the Copyright Act 1994 this image may not be used for any other purpose, nor may it be cropped, overprinted or otherwise altered without express written permission from City Gallery Wellington.

ENDS

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