Tatau 1978 – 2005

Paulo Sulu’ape was the pre-eminent Samoan tattooist of his generation. Mark Adams met him in 1978 and photographed his practice and that of his brothers and cousins. After Sulu’ape’s death in 1999 Adams produced a new, extended series of photographs of individuals tattooed by Sulu’ape in New Zealand and beyond. They represent an unusually careful and complex response to difficult issues: of our colonial history, our politics, violence and memory and place, and they ask tough questions of this scene and its history – questions that are inevitably unresolved. They also grapple with the discomforts of cross-cultural image-making and its histories. Adams’s project as a photographer is based on a fundamental intuition that the world we inhabit everyday in the Pacific is marked by traces of a founding violence that has made it what it is and him who he is. Artist talk: Thursday 18 September 1pm

Image courtesy of the artist: Image title: 12.2.1982. Farwood Drive, Henderson. West Auckland. Uli (victim) Tufuga tatatau Su’a Pasina Sefo 750mm x 1000mm enlargement from Kodak 4 x 5 inch Ekatachrome transparency on to C type Fuji Crystal Archive silver based paper

 Mark Adams

9 September – 2 October

Ilam Campus Gallery, Canterbury School of Fine Arts, Canterbury