John Pule is recognised as one of the Pacific's most significant artists and writers. His work involves media as diverse as painting, drawing, printmaking film making, poetry and performance. 

He was born in Niue, a small Pacific Island nation but came to New Zealand at age two. Though his childhood and formative years were spent in New Zealand, his artistic roots are firmly based in the land of his ancestors. The Pacific Islands' mythology and history defines his style but the experience of a culture outside of his native one has touched his work. Intimations of universally shared humanity fuse with his personal response to the colonisation of the Pacific. 

His novels The Shark That Ate the Sun and Burn My Head in Heaven have been published by Penguin. Pule has held residencies at the Cultural Museum in Rarotonga in 2003, and at Galerie Römerapotheke in Zürich in 2005. The artist's work has been represented in two Asia-Pacific Triennials at the Queensland Art Gallery, and in 2004 he exhibited as part of Paradise Now! at the Asia Society in New York - the largest exhibition of New Zealand art held since Te Maori in 1984. 

In 2004 he was honoured with the prestigious Laureate Award from the Arts Foundation of New Zealand.