Senior Conatemporary Pacific artist Fatu Feu'u has been seen as the leader of contemporary Pacific arts for many years.
Fatu's work records his personal responses and interpretations of oral histories, myths, stories, songs, traditions and political events in and about Samoa. He is accomplished in many mdeia - painting (oil and acrylic), sculpture and print. His palette is usually bright with distinct brushwork and often many layers of paint giving a textual appearance. Known for often using tatau and siapo designs he creates a visual narrative of oral traditions.
Biography
Fatu was born in the village of Poutasi in the District of Falealili on the island of Upolu in Western Samoa in March 1946.
He spent his childhood in the village, swimming in the river and sea, watching the making of mats, the building of canoes and houses (fale), and other traditional crafts. He was not a strong child and spent much time in the company of his mother, godmother, and aunties. The knowledge and the skills he learned from them has been an important influence in his art making. His first artworks were drawing on the stones of the paepae (raised stone platforms around the houses), and his style and desire to be an artist developed from here.
He came to New Zealand as a 20 year old almost by accident. He had been going to go to America but a last minute change meant he came to New Zealand settling in Porirua.
Fatu spent his first years in New Zealand working in the car manufacturing industry as a colour matcher, and then in design and marketing for Nylex New Zealand.
He continued to paint and after moving to Auckland met acclaimed artists Tony Fomison and Phillip Clairmont. Tony was an important influence and encouraged Fatu to paint the things that were important to him. Fatu began to express his interpretation of fa’asamoa – traditional religious and cultural values of Samoa such as respect (ava), reverence (fa’aaloalo), love, concern and compassion for others (alofa).
His first exhibition of paintings was in 1983 at Massey Homestead in Manukau. In 1986 and 1987 he spent time with Franz Muka of Muka studio in Grey Lynn learning the art of lithography. In 1988 he was commissioned to create a sculpture for Auckland Girls Grammar School – the first large stone sculpture he exhibited.
Whilst working consistently to create a significant body of work Fatu has also spent a lot of time working towards a greater understanding and acknowledgement of the importance of Pacific Island art.
Curriculum Vitae
Selected Exhibitions 2007 Hier Aujourd'hui Demain, Tjibaou Museum of Contemporary Art, New Caledonia Ele Uma, Salamander Gallery, Christchurch 2006 Sasala, Warwick Henderson Gallery, Auckland 2004 Vai Pouli, Warwick Henderson Gallery, Auckland 2003 Puaikura, Warwick Henderson Gallery, Auckland & Museum of Cook Islands, Rarotonga O le Tautai Samoa,Auckland City Gallery Ifoga, Museum of Brisbane, Australia 2001 Talosaga, Warwick Henderson Gallery, Auckland 2000 Recent Works, Auckland City Gallery 1999 Ulu Afi – Paintings and Sculpture,Warwick Henderson Gallery, Auckland 1997 New Works, Warwick Henderson Gallery, Auckland 1995 New Works, Warwick Henderson Gallery, Auckland 1994 Tuiafono, Lane Gallery, Auckland 1992 Fa’afofoga Monoprints, Christchurch Canterbury Gallery, Lane Gallery & RKS Art, Auckland 1991 Pacific Connection, RKS Art, Auckland & Muka Gallery, Auckland 1990 Mitiuliuli, Pacific Ritual Mask, New Lithographs, Le Tanoa, Auckland
1989 Fugalagi (Floral Impressions), Charlotte H Gallery, Auckland, Lopdell House, Titirangi, Auckland, 3.33 Gallery, Wellington 1988 New Oil Paintings, 3.33 Gallery, Wellington Woodcuts, Proba Gallery, Auckland
Current Works, Regent Hotel, Auckland Pacific Ceremonial Masks, Massey Homestead, Auckland 1987 Oil painting/Tapa Motif, Samoa House, Auckland 1986 Solo o le Lupe, Samoa House, Auckland 1985 Manukau Series, Massey Homestead, Auckland 1984 Spinning Frontier, Gallery Pacific, Auckland 1983 Manukau Series, Massey Homestead, Auckland
Selected Commissions 2007 Le Folauga, Auckland War Memorial Museum 2005 Alapika, Salamander Gallery, Christchurch 2003
Sculpture, Rarotonga Hotel, Cook Islands
Mural, Museum of Brisbane, Australia
Lake Macquarie Art Museum – Sydney – Australia – Sculpture
2002
Woodblock, Volunteer Service Abroad 40th Birthday
Sculptures, Northern Province and Poindimie City Council, New Caledonia 2001
Sculpture, Massey Leisure Centre, Waitakere City Council, Auckland 2000
Mural, Ranui Library, Waitakere City Council, Auckland 1993 Tui, Grey Lynn Park, Auckland 1990 O le Tautai Matagofie, Aotea Centre Mural, Auckland New Zealand 1990, Lithographs by 20 Artists, Muka Studio, Auckland 1989
Pathfinder Mural New York 1988
Auckland Girls Grammar School
Collections
Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa
Auckland City Art Gallery
University of Auckland
University of Waikato
Bathhouse Museum, Rotorua Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Wellington MacMillan Centre, University of Canterbury
National Gallery, Brisbane, Australia
Museum of Canberra, Australia
Centre Culturel Jean-Marie Tjibaou, New Caledonia
Frankfurt Art Museum, Germany
Museum of Modern Art, New York City
Bibliographies and Publications New Zealand Painting a Concise History, Michael Dunn, Auckland University Press 2003 Of Tapa and Tatau The Art of Fatu Feu’u, Helen Pearson, Interactive Education 2003 Contemporary New Zealand Art 3, Elizabeth Caughey and John Gow, David Bateman 2002 Speaking in Colour; Conversations with artists of Pacific Island heritage, Sean Mallon and Pandora Fulialo Pereira, Te Papa, 1997
Statement
I hope that one day Pacific Island art will be well recognised by the Western World for its spiritual value, its meaning to the Pacific people and as a worthwhile contribution to this country, New Zealand.
Press Release
O Le Tautai Samoa
Fatu Feu'u is the first painter and printmaker to bridge the cultural traditions which exist between Samoa and New Zealand. By employing his images to speak publicly about what it means to live surrounded by dissimilar societies, Fatu stimulates a dialogue using two divergent visual languages. He envisions the oral narratives inspired by memory’s recollection as being beacons that may show him how to reveal that pacific identity is growing forwards, and is reaching outwards. He focuses on the humanist ideas surrounding family, relationships and location to pictorially communicate stories about pacific experience.
Fatu’s comprehension of being surrounded by two cultures brings each society’s divergent visual perception into immediate personal contrast. Tausala echoes the 1000 BC figural designs found on lapita pottery from Nenumbo in the Solomon Islands. Manaia celebrates the escalating authority of contemporary tatau. Orongo imagines a mask filled with physical longing. In giving his images potent stories to tell, Fatu continues the ancient Samoan practice of fagogo – where tales are revealed and communicated at the same moment. The two males in Taula’aitu and Ivi’ivia are immeasurably sturdy ghosts stripped down to their bare bones and filled with a wilful, uncontrollable energy. They appear at night to frighten and suppress while encompassing spooky feelings of protection and safety.
Found among the many renowned traditions of Samoan proverbial expression is the phrase - O le i'a a tautau e alu i le fa'alolo - which might be translated as 'the fish are doing the what the fisher hopes for'. Tautai has many other evocative connotations, of the mariner who safely steers an ocean-going vessel, and of the person who sails over immense seas to another locality. For Fatu, tautai indicates that his migration to New Zealand was a singular creative act of diaspora defining how he could work as a Samoan artist outside of Samoa. Tautai is the fisher who seeks the fish, the doer, the navigator, the person who knows the direction they must take when they initiate their journey.
Until he was teenager Fatu Feu'u lived in the Samoan village of Poutasi Falealili and it was there that he created his first drawings. Vali e laupepa - paint and paper - weren't available to him as materials; instead he used coral to draw designs on black volcanic scoria. Fatu did not learn to become an ‘artist' who was Samoan, he learnt what being Samoan meant for him as an artist. What Fatu was drawing in Samoa during the 1950s was not graffiti but the figures, textures and patterns that would became the first visual symbols of his image-making. By watching the treatment of siapo decoration and the application of tatau he assimilated the fundamental traditions of Samoan pictorial representation.
Siapo decoration and tatau were the first pacific 'painting' that he encountered and this knowledge motivated how he would approach his own design making. The recent print Viiga poula coalesces many of the artist’s early learnings in Samoa as well as his extensive research into pacific design history. Vi‘iga is a key symbol in the artist’s work because it is an emblem of praise that gives respect to others. Pale auro, however reveals how the migration of Samoans to Aotearoa continues the extensive traditions of Polynesian voyaging, yet the land that is arrived at is not as bright as the home that was left. Ulutoa moana shows Auckland’s Hauraki Gulf as being a fish-filled zone protected by local guardians who are also sentinels.
Fatu's prints are storyboards that depict visual narratives from a Samoan viewpoint. Fatu recognises that designs had a long history which, when brought together, expressed rich stories, especially when combined with what he learnt from exploring traditional patterns. Fatu's art works are like a pictorial vein from a beginning to an end, where the intersections of oral and visual languages disclose stories. His vision operates across time to affirm the ancient purpose of Samoan imagery as an insight to understanding. By processing design from an internal memory to an external symbol he reflects on the affirmations of cultural self-recognition. As he says: ‘I want my images to look like my culture’.
Ron Brownson
Courtesy of the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki
