Tukutonga (Leaving Home)

Tukutonga (Leaving Home) is Kulimoe'anga Stone Maka's second solo exhibition at Jonathan Smart Gallery, following Kumi E Manatu in February 2022. The artist dedicates this body of work to the moment he realized he needed to leave his village, families, and friends in Tonga to pursue a better life and his art practice. The exhibition features paintings created with smoke and enamel on spider webs on canvas. Maka's visual language relies on smoke and spiders' webs as foundational elements, with refined techniques: canvases are smoked multiple times for rich blacks or touched lightly as needed, while multiple webs are sprayed, balled, and layered in materials like polyurethane to create texture. Two panoramic landscape paintings—Kula 'o Avatongo and Holounua—feature lines of reflection bisecting smoky island silhouettes with colored webs, suggesting life forms past and present. The compositions vary in their degrees of control, balancing delicate and strong aesthetic qualities.