VIBRANT colours boxed in with messy strokes, usually with a worthy cause or fun theme embedded in the painting. It is one of the ways one could describe and recognise the work of Lambert Ho. Yet at his first showing, it was easy to mistake the solo exhibition for a collective showcase.
At his first ever solo local show entitled “Art on the Island”, Lambert wowed art enthusiasts who travelled to the Leleuvia Island Resort to view the 46 pieces, one for every year he has spent on earth.
“The theme is ‘The Colour of Lambert’ because I am about all colours. The colour of Lambert means it is not specifically any particular colour – it’s everything.”
Originally from Kadavu with maternal links to Ovalau, Lambert is quite the celebrity on the local scene. With works which range from fine art to mixed media and even spanning to wearable art, Lambert is synonymous with diversity.
He took this to another level two weekends ago when his works showcased totally new styles of art, including one from Japan.
It was as if he was saving his best for a first showcase that has come 20 years too late, or at least much later than an artist of similar repute might have done. A total coincidence he insists.
“Why have I never shown in Fiji before? That’s quite a profound question. Since doing art professionally, I was always invited to other spaces around the world. New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, the US, Africa, South Africa, around the world. I have no idea why I didn’t show in Fiji.”
He did stage a retrospective exhibition about 20 years ago at the now Fiji National University, showing art he had done and sold for a good few years before that exhibition took place.
“As soon as you buy my piece, it goes to your home and nobody else sees it. So that was all of the works that people had bought and taken to their homes and I loaned it back. I was on my own, there has been no one after that.”
The Colour of Lambert pieces, however, were painted especially for the “Art on the Island” program that Leleuvia Island Resort and local art manager Peter Sipeli staged to lure the local eco-travel crowd to a different kind of vacation.
Held between November 18-20, the weekend brought together representatives from cultural institutions, art patrons, the local expatriate travel crowd and customers of local arts and crafts events.
Leleuvia manager couple Colin Philp and Lee-Anne Lee have become synonymous locally with a brand of events which combine cultural exploits with conservation and sports. So when they called, a great many people turned up.
Lambert explains the setting and encouragement he received from Leleuvia and the local art crowd gave him the impetus to go all out and dabble in work he had always wanted to as well as showcase causes he had been passionate about for some time.
In addition, his recent foray into traditional transportation sent him on a voyage across Melanesia and provided much inspiration.
Just in case he needed another incentive, the resort managers built him an island style art studio on Leleuvia. This in addition to the now famed “Waisiliva Gallery”, named for the Bau waters which surround Leleuvia and the chiefly island.
For all this, Lambert takes on the role of custodian of the resorts. It’s a position not inappropriate for the artist, who strikes an interesting balance between pop culture and all things eccentric, is quite the traditional iTaukei godmother persona.
And local art lovers may see this come through in the new styles of art within “The Colour of Lambert”.
“My paintings are about life, whether it’s the Marama Rua or work on masi or whatever, it’s many things.”
As you walk through the Drua Gallery at Leleuvia where “The Colour of Lambert” is exhibited, you will find an interesting array of painting styles.
That which stands out the most is his colourful, bold, dramatic style. But a little walk through the first 10 pieces and elements from a voyage he took on the Uto ni Yalo stands out, along with a series of seven exotic pieces which can transport you to the orient.
The Uto Ni Yalo voyage took Lambert through several countries in Melanesia; Vanuatu, Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea.
Tasked with carrying organic cacao from Bougainville to New Zealand and being in close quarters with a crew of 16 for five months through challenging sails made an impact on the Kadavu native.
During the stopover at Port Villa in Vanuatu, the crew encountered passionate West Papua activism and you will see this on “(UN) Certain feature”.
Using a butterfly, a pair of scissors and symbolisms of the earth and minerals, Lambert uses the painting to tell us that the people of West Papua are being pulled from all angles by forces of greed and yet there is beauty to behold.
As Lambert talks through the other pieces in his collection, we realise the artist is a perfectionist of sort, not ready to show us his real colours until he had a palette he could be comfortable with or proud of?
The Earth, its struggles as an ecosystem as well as the socio-economic struggles of people on the planet is a large part of what Lambert paints about.
In “I Hear Plants Calling” Lambert says our forests are calling out to us and begging us to stop cutting down trees. In that piece, he ties environmental concerns about land challenges on his traditional maternal home at Draiba, Ovalau.
“It connects us to the Earth. I hear plants calling all the time, saying ‘don’t cut me down’.”
As he gets more traditional, so does his foray into the spiritual and the paintings lead us into an even deeper appreciation of Lambert’s spirituality.
In “The Guardians”, three out of maybe 100 people who visited the gallery picked out the age old legendary Marama Rua the painting is based on. Although the painting does show three women and not the two ladies which most iTaukei children grow up hearing about to watch out for when they’re being noisier than usual.
As we view the seven Naturo paintings, a black, white and red splash of Japanese style of painting made by blowing paint across paper, we realise that Lambert is very diverse.
Quite like his five-month trip across the Pacific on the Uto ni Yalo, Lambert is on an exciting voyage to learn and understand as much as possible of the world he lives in. When we get lucky, art havens such as Leleuvia show us the colours of his adventurous life as he paints them on canvas, denim or masi.
“This depicts our society and the different colours that we come from in society. This could be Raiwaqa, or this could Nasese or this could be Nadera or whatever. The black lines keep us in our comfort zones, we are all still wary of these different colours which could represent different people. Yet the colours bring us together. We are from the same area and have the same colours.”
The “Colour of Lambert” will move to the Fiji Museum soon.
