Tui Emma and Sulieti Fieme'a Gillies and Burrows
Tui Emma and Sulieti Fieme'a Gillies and Burrows
Tui Emma Gillies is a New Zealand Tongan artist whose practice preserves ancestral DNA through the sacred ritual of ngatu (tapa) making. Her work fuses contemporary and traditional approaches, often challenging, confronting, and controversial, while remaining grounded in respect for the medium and the ancestors who practised it before her.
Her work is held in significant museum and gallery collections throughout New Zealand, Australia, Germany, the United States, and in private collections worldwide. In 2014, alongside her mother Sulieti Fieme'a Burrows, she helped revive hiapo growing and bark cloth making in Falevai, Vava'u, where the practice had disappeared decades earlier.
Through her practice, Gillies continues to push creative boundaries while honouring and celebrating Tongan cultural heritage.
Sulieti Fieme'a Burrows is an award-winning artist and expert practitioner of ngatu, the decorated bark cloth of Tonga. Born in Falevai, Vava'u in 1951, she moved to Aotearoa in the 1970s, bringing with her a deep knowledge of ngatu and other traditional Tongan art forms.
Her work has been exhibited internationally and acquired by major institutions including the Royal Academy of Arts in London and the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne. A passionate advocate for the continuation and revival of bark cloth making, Burrows has shared her knowledge across generations, passing these skills to her daughter and granddaughter and helping ensure the future of this important cultural practice.
Project Summary
NGV Triennial 2026 | National Gallery of Victoria | Melbourne, Australia
This December, Tui Emma Gillies and Sulieti Fieme'a Burrows will participate in the opening programme of the NGV Triennial 2026 at the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne. As featured artists, they will present The Last Kai, a large-scale work measuring five metres by two-and-a-half metres, as part of an exhibition bringing together nearly 100 artists at the forefront of contemporary global practice.
Alongside the exhibition, Gillies and Burrows will take part in public programmes, media engagements, and networking events, while leading a contemporary ngatu workshop that combines traditional bark cloth knowledge with contemporary approaches to making. The workshop will provide an opportunity to share Tongan cultural heritage with international audiences while demonstrating the ongoing evolution of ngatu as both an ancestral and contemporary art form.
Through this opportunity, mother and daughter will celebrate the presentation of The Last Kai on an international stage while continuing their shared commitment to the preservation, revitalisation, and transmission of Tongan bark cloth knowledge across generations.