Tongpop is the art movement you’ve never heard of but can’t miss

It’s colourful and camp, can be joyfully silly but has layers of meaning and deep cultural references. Welcome to Tongpop, the wild and wonderful creation of multidisciplinary artist Telly Tuita, visual artist-in-residence at this year’s Sydney Festival.

Tuita’s installations feature at the festival hub in Walsh Bay, and he has also staged a Tongpop takeover of the historic steamship SS John Oxley, complete with a six-metre totem dubbed Carlotta after the legendary Les Girls performer.

Telly Tuita with one of the pieces in his show at the festival’s Walsh Bay hub.Credit: Rhett Wyman

Tuita came to the attention of festival director Olivia Ansell when she saw his Tongpop’s Great Expectations show at Campbelltown Arts Centre. He spent seven months conceiving and making work for the Sydney Festival show called The Ta and Va of Tongpop.

All his work, often repurposing cheap plastic material, is woven through with references to his own remarkable story growing up in Tonga and Australia (he now lives in New Zealand).

Despite being abandoned by his parents “for complicated reasons” as a young child, he recalls his early years in Tonga with his extended family as idyllic. It was also where he learnt many of the traditional techniques he now employs in his art practice.

“A lot of my daily life was chores,” he says. “There were domestic chores, but then also chores helping the women with the crafts and the art stuff, preparing materials for weaving or ngatu [bark cloth]. So I grew up around a culture that makes things not to show, but because it’s part of daily life, part of the economy and part of the production of culture.”

Tuita frequently repurposes cheap plastic materials in his work.Credit: Rhett Wyman

In 1989, aged nine, Tuita was sent to live with his father and stepmother in Minto. It was the biggest of culture shocks.

“I arrived at the airport, met complete strangers and then went to KFC to have a meal from this talking box,” he says. “It was that sort of big punch of life where your whole world shifts and turns overnight.”

Speaking only Tongan, Tuita went to Campbellfield Public School, where he recalls being taught English for two years by a “lovely palangi [white] lady”. He completed his HSC and went to art school, then went on to teach art. Eight years ago, encouraged by his husband, he embraced a full-time artistic career.

The term Tongpop came about mostly on a whim after Tuita kept being asked to describe his style. He loved the sound of the word as well as the obvious reference to Pop Art.

“And I just felt it was very me,” he says. “I didn’t grow up with money. The materials I was using were literally whatever I could find – usually plastic, colourful, cheap stuff from $2 shops or op shops.

“Tongpop became a very easy way to articulate exactly what I did. People would want a big sort of sweeping statement, but I can’t give that because I think I’m a byproduct of all the things that I’ve experienced.”

The Ta and Va of Tongpop, Walsh Bay Arts Precinct. Until January 26.