Vāle presents works by Tāmaki Makaurau-based practitioners and AUT researchers, Albert L. Refiti and Julian Hooper. Conceived as a pair of standalone presentations, the exhibition compiles hundreds of paper-based works produced by each artist over more than a decade in an effort to delve into their expansive drawing practices.

Shared across both Tongan and Samoan languages, the term ‘vāle’ is a synonym for ‘aimless’, ‘misguided’, or ‘ignorant’. In short, the everyday meaning of vāle is ‘stupid’. Yet despite our self-deprecating humour in adopting it as the exhibition’s title, the Tongan Tāvāist philosopher Hūfanga ‘Okusitino Māhina provides a more nuanced definition of vāle. For Māhina, vāle conveys the polar opposite to order, which is composed of knowledge (‘ilo) and skill (poto). In this sense, Refiti describes vāle as indexing ‘the stirring up of ilo (or order)’ within each artists’ daily routines, as they ‘drift through an array of cosmopolitan Pacific Art concepts and rituals’. 

Whilst Vāle takes the form of an exhibition, it is in essence a conglomeration of humble annotations and sketches which have been literally sliced from workbooks and pinned to the gallery walls. In this sense, the works speak to the discipline of reiterating concepts, be it Refiti’s ongoing series of sketches detailing kava circles staged at numerous sites over several years, or Hooper’s recurring motifs such as hand-scripted alphabets and figurative forms, which are ‘stress-tested’ over and over. Recurring annotations in the margins reveal the contexts in which the drawings were produced, at times within this very academic environment amidst staff meetings and administrative duties. In this way the drawings also attest to the discipline of capturing fleeting ideas, regardless of when and where they arise.