Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples
This Must Be the Island — Liga Hanai e Motu
Oceanic conversations
GREGORY O’BRIEN AND JOHN PUHIATAU PULE
Massey University Press
RRP $70.00
Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples
“This Must Be the Island” is an extraordinary book – part conversation, part visual diary, part poetry book and an exploration of artistic motivation.
The book follows the poet-artists John Puhiatau Pule and Gregory O’Brien from 2010 as they embark on a voyage of artmaking and travel around the South Pacific, making collaborative etchings, corresponding, writing poetry and immersing themselves in Moana Oceania.
The two artists enjoy and respond to each other’s visions with O’Brien noting “There is an incredible energy, vitality and momentum in John’s poetry and painting. I am in awe of it, rather than being exactly ‘influenced’ or directly affected by it. John is certainly a wise, knowledgeable person to travel with — particularly in the Pacific. One is lifted up.”
Sixteen years on, their collaboration continues to yield a mixture of dreams, memories and a pervasive sense of the joy and wonder of being alive in this part of the world. This Must Be the Island — Liga Hanai e Motu is the story of their creative friendship and an art project as expansive and all-encompassing as the Pacific.
In this diary they write about the mundane events of their daily lives, discoveries and their commitment to exploring their own lives, their writing and their art.
So, the book is a mixture of their drawings, etching and poetry and writings, creating a tapestry of the simple and the profound as they reflect on their journeys, art influences, the practicality of their project.
They also reflect on the 2011 expedition when they were part of a nine artist contingent artists including Phil Dadson, John Reynolds, Elizabeth Thomson and Robin White which voyaged, on the HMNZS Otago, through the subtropical Kermadec region, one of the few remaining near-pristine ocean sites on the planet.
The works they produced in response utilise an abundance of materials, methods, and ideas sourced from Pacific handcrafts, poetry, waiata, jewellery, maritime painting traditions, and scientific photography.
The book has letters from the artists to each other as well as poems by each of them as well as collaborative poems. There are also a number of illustrations taken from each from the artist’s notebooks which add to the rich tapestry of ideas and reflections.
The book reveals an intriguing and complex dialogue between the two creative minds exploring the Pacific and their interconnected responses to their friendship and journeys.
Reflecting on the genesis and the development of the book O’Brien says “the shape of John’s and my book was entirely determined by the etchings we have made together. There are over 70 reproduced in the book. Once these collaborative images were in place, we both had a strong sense of other materials that would be drawn into the book. Firstly, there were the poems we had written together or separately during the period. Then there were the visual journals which we both keep all the time — those journals wanted to be part of our conversation too.”
“The last component in the book to fall into place was the correspondence, most of it in email form. We have written thousands of emails backwards and forwards. I started reading my way through them (yes, you’re right, I sensibly hadn’t deleted any of them). I soon realised that they told the story of our friendship and our creative work together. And they also tracked our movements — the many places we have been together over the past 16 years: Australia, New Zealand, New Caledonia, Niue, Raoul Island, Tonga, Rapanui, Chile . . .”
