Glen Wolfgramm
Glen Wolfgramm is an Auckland based artist of Tongan, Irish and German whakapapa. He has been part of the surge in Pacific art driven by Fatu Feu’u, John Pule and Dagmar Dyck, but he has stood apart, admired by the others while finding his own way through some twelve solo and eight group exhibitions and awards shows.
Wolfgramm is intent on drawing something from his own place, never specific, always inventing, pulling the familiar in, covering it over, almost as if the observable should be re-imagined.
His paintings can be read as multiple habitats, cities, buildings, roads, islands and seas, foliage that is familiar and yet confounding, dense paintings that hold a community of ideas together, only to see them fly apart.
The work comes about organically, owing something to Wolfgramm’s diverse histories, both artistic and cultural, but at the same time it comes through his own living history, where he is, who he is, an artist with the currents of the world flowing through him.
In 2022, Wolfgramm was the subject of a survey show at Pataka Art Museum, Porirua. Spanning two decades of practice, A’eva tokotaha he Pasifiki Solo across the Pacific’ included works from public and private collections throughout Aotearoa,
Notoriously reluctant to talk about his work, there is a wonderful video of him doing just that at his recent survey show here.
