Happy Pacifica, 2012

The anchor work of this series, Happy Pacifica, is conceived as an open proposition. Deliberately unstable in its orientation — it may be hung and encountered from multiple vantages — the painting resists a singular reading.

At its centre, four male figures converge upon a single female subject. The composition stages desire as a form of possession, prompting the central, unresolved inquiry of the work: what of her own happiness?

Beyond the interpersonal, Happy Pacifica operates as an allegory of the South Pacific itself. Touching the layered history of Polynesia, the four protagonists function as archetypes of Occidental power — explorers, missionaries, traders and administrators — their competing claims over the female figure articulating a broader critique of colonial entanglement and imperial desire.

Other works in the Happy Pacifica suite extend this line of inquiry, inviting sustained reflection on the enduring legacies of colonisation and its profound, lived consequences for Pacific peoples in Aotearoa New Zealand.