Summary

Coining the term Tongpop to describe his rich yet complex relationship to his ancestral home of Tonga, alongside his lived experiences across Australia and Aotearoa, Telly Tuita’s practice spans performative self-portraiture. Through sustained experimentation across photography, video, painting, sculpture, and installation, Tuita examines his own life story, navigating ideas of belonging, colonisation, and cultural hybridity.

Tuita draws on the multifaceted nature of his experiences to champion the possibility of multiple, shifting versions of oneself. Employing familiar, and at times nostalgic, references and materials - including pop culture, religious iconography, motifs, colours, textures, and light - these works subvert fixed ideas of identity, making connections across time and space.

Those who encounter the works are invited to move, gather, and position themselves in relation to them, to Tuita, his stories, and to one another, reflecting the ways identity is formed through context, proximity, and exchange.

Good As Gold frames Tuita’s broader enquiry into how worth is assigned, inherited, re-negotiated, and reimagined through language, memory, and lived experience with the presentation of old and new works.