15 November 2025–10 May 2026

Lanu Mamanu — Colourful Patterns Pusi Urale and Vaimaila Urale

Artists Pusi Urale and Vaimaila Urale (Fagamalo, Savai’i, Western Samoa, now named Samoa) are contemporary, innovative artists who live in Avondale, Tāmaki Makaurau. For the first time, both mother and daughter are publicly exhibiting a show of artworks together, representing their distinctive creative practices and more than a century of Samoan knowledge and insight that renders past and present in real time.

Together these artists playfully and meaningfully weave a language of patterns and Samoan symbols into the canvases of paint, wood and fabric, as women living and adapting immersively to the cultural knowledges of past and present. These artists speak to a sense of place that isn’t physically fixed, or bound to traditional mediums, but act a portal of connection to a sense of an expansive homeland that touches people’s hearts, minds, and spirit.

Lanu Mamanu — Colourful Patterns Wall Text Audio English

Lanu Mamanu — Colourful Patterns Wall Text Audio Te Reo Māori

Artist Bios

Pusi Urale

Pusi Urale is an artist based in Avondale, Tamaki Makaurau. At 87 years-old, Urale continues to paint in her kitchen every day, and is well known for her bold, colourful and vibrant designs featuring eye-catching dots, patterns and lines. Through her paintbrush, she conjures forward bright memories of island villages, celebrations of womanhood and culture, and a mischievous, whimsical approach to life centred in Samoan identity.

Urale is a retired schoolteacher and beloved to her community. She is mother to six children, seventeen grandchildren and several great grandchildren. Urale grew up living with art, and raised her family with a love for creativity but only started painting herself until well in her 50s. She has a Diploma in Art & Creativity from the Learning Connexion in Wellington. Urale was a finalist in the prestigious Wallace Art Awards in 2017 and 2018, and has presented solo exhibitions at Te Uru Gallery, Waitākere, Fresh Gallery, Ōtara, The Upstairs Gallery and has also shown with The New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts.

Vaimaila Urale

Vaimaila Urale is a Samoan-born interdisciplinary artist based in Tāmaki Makaurau, Aotearoa. She has ancestral ties to the villages of Fagamalo, Matavai, Falealupo, and Safa’ato’a in Samoa. Her practice is deeply engaged with the politics and poetics of technology, exploring how digital languages intersect with Indigenous knowledge and visual culture. Urale uses ASCII characters, such as “<”, “>”, “/”, and “\”, to create graphic compositions that reference traditional Samoan motifs found in tapa and tatau, translating ancestral mark-making into code-like forms. By merging digital language with customary symbols, she navigates the tensions and connections between contemporary systems and ancestral storytelling.

Urale has exhibited across Aotearoa, including at the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery – Len Lye Centre, The Dowse Art Museum and Māngere Arts Centre. Internationally, her work has been shown at Kunsthall Trondheim (Norway), Para Site (Hong Kong), the Casablanca Biennale (Morocco), and 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art (Australia). She will exhibit at SCAPE Public Art in Ōtautahi in 2025, and Colomboscope Interdisciplinary Arts Festival in Sri Lanka in 2026. She is the co-founder and Director of Moana Fresh, and a member of the collaborative art collective D.A.N.C.E. art club.