Between Tree and Tide - Luca Tu’avao Walton @lucidluca

21 August - 2nd October 2026

Between Tree and Tide reveals a suspended world of portraiture, memory, and atmosphere. In this debut solo exhibition, Luca Tu‘avao Walton aka Lucidluca gathers fragments of feeling, beauty, and imagination into a space that exists somewhere between the familiar feminine and the fantasy. Rather than offering a fixed narrative, the exhibition invites viewers into a shifting environment shaped by their own presence, light and shadows, stillness and movement. Large-scale existing and reimagined portraits inhabit the gallery alongside silhouette forms inspired by significant childhood treescapes from his home in Tonga, allowing shadows to move across the space like echoes of another place. Reflecting on a landscape held through sensation, rather than fully seen. At the centre of his body of work is an altar-like approach to the women, places, and stories that continue to shape the artist’s world. The figures within Luca’s portraiture exist between reality and dream, drawing from the women who raised him while also engaging with the mythology and his childhood imaginations of the moana. Mermaids and other symbolic forms become vessels for ideas of transformation, connection, and belonging. Between Tree and Tide lingers in an in-between state, where memory becomes fluid and meaning remains open. Through portraiture, installation, and sound, the exhibition creates a space of suggestion and return inviting viewers to move through the artist's world where it all meets on a mat under the shade of a tree with a view of the tide rolling in.

Artist Bio

Luca Tu’avao Walton is a Fiji born, New Zealand-based artist of Tongan and Pākeha heritage whose work focuses on portraiture and Pacific identity. While he was raised Lagoon-side in Mataika, Nuku’alofa Tonga, he traces his family to the villages of Lotofoa, Koulo, Holopeka, Pangai, and Lofanga in Ha’apai, and Tefisi in Vava’u. These places continue to inform the people, landscapes, and stories that appear throughout his practice. Working primarily through painting and drawing, Luca creates portraits of Pasifika women that sit between observation and imagination. His work is shaped by family photographs, childhood memories, island environments, and the visual language of contemporary Pacific life. Bold colours and atmosphere play a central role in his illustrations. Luca has developed a strong following for his luminous portraits and contemporary yet vintage inspired approach to Pasifika representation. His practice is concerned with how identity is carried through people, place, and memory, offering intimate reflections on connection, culture, and belonging within a Pacific context.