Ioane Ioane


Ioane Ioane is a New Zealand artist of Samoan descent. His work is informed by his Samoan heritage and includes performance, film, painting, installation and sculpture. Ioane's art often depicts the coexistence of contemporary New Zealand and traditional Samoan cultures.
In conversation about his work Fale Sā with art historian Caroline Vercoe, Ioane states, Sacred places are not necessarily a church, but it's a place where one likes to be in, a place of affirmation. Curator Ron Brownson writes, ''Ioane's attitude to sculptural process is cosmological – his carvings bind present reality with a representation of the past.''

Career

Ioane was the finalist for the Saatchi and Saatchi Art Awards in 1996. In 2005 Ioane won the Creative New Zealand Pacific Innovation and Excellence Art Award. In 2009 Whangarei Art Museum presented the first major survey of Ioane’s work, John Ioane – Journeyman Artist and the Pacific Paradox: A 25 Year Selective Survey Exhibition, curated by Museum Director, Scott Pothan. In 2016, Ioane was the Artist in Residence at the University of Canterbury's Macmillan Brown Centre for Pacific Studies. In 2018, he was the Creative New Zealand Sāmoa Artist in Residence.
His work is held in both private and public collections, including the Auckland Art Gallery; the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa; University of Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, England; the National University of Samoa; the Tjibaou Cultural Centre, Nouméa, New Caledonia; the Wallace Arts Trust, Auckland; and the University of Auckland Art Collection.

Education

In 1985 Ioane received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Elam School of Fine Arts at Auckland University. In 1986 he earned a diploma in teaching from the Auckland College of Education. In 1996 he received a post graduate diploma in fine arts from Elam.

Selected exhibitions