Tongpop is a term coined by artist Telly Tuita to describe his visual language.
It celebrates Tuita’s rich relationship with his ancestral home of Tonga as well as his lived experiences in Australia and New Zealand.
As does the first solo exhibition of Tuita, who grew up in Minto and worked in Campbelltown before moving to Wellington, NZ.
The artist completed his Higher School Certificate at Campbelltown Performing Arts High School.
Naturally, the exhibition is being held right here in our own – and very popular – Campbelltown Arts Centre.
Titled Telly Tuita: Tongpop’s Great Expectations, the exhibition has at its centre two major new commissions.
The first is a site-specific Tongpop landscape which features mixed media painting and installation.
A new multi-channel video work, the artist’s first time working in animation is the other commission central to this interesting exhibition to kick off 2024 in Campbelltown’s arts hub.
The exhibition opened on January 3 and will be available for viewing until March 28.
Tongpop’s Great Expectations invites the viewer to experience Tuita’s Tongpop multiverse.
It is a compelling assembly of early works from Tuita’s time growing up in Minto and working in Campbelltown and from his practice since 2017 when he moved across the ditch.
Tuita’s works encourage viewers to recognise their own life in his story, especially the conflict between great expectations of ourselves and the expectations of our contemporary global and technological reality.
The exhibition is accompanied by an intergenerational public program which will focus on how one encounters the different stages of life, in Tuita’s words, “dawn, day and dusk”.
This project has been supported by the Hazlett Family and Cameron Brae Group.
