Pisupo lua afe (Corned beef 2000) and
Nga Kina to his paintings, mixed media work, performance art, projections and work on paper, the 54-year-old says genre-bending is his signature.
“I emphasise that to my students ... I always want to be challenged. Don’t stick to one thing.”
He says the acknowledgements of his work through the years is recognition of his ancestors’ dreams when they first emigrated to New Zealand.
“It’s fulfilling that part of why they came here in the first place,” he says.
Tuffery says there’s a wave of Pasifika artists alive now built on the backs of their ancestors as next-generation diaspora such as Oscar Kightley, Ioane Ioane, Fatu Feu'u.