Fatu Feu'u

 

Born in Western Samoa in 1946 Fatu Feu’u moved to Auckland, New Zealand at the age of twenty. He worked through a series of jobs in the textile industy before committing himself as a fulltime artist in 1988. Feu’u has been consistently interested in traditional Pacific motifs and designs drawn from carving, tapa painting and tattooing but has combined these in a contemporary format and means of expression. He has made regular research trips to Samoa, the States and Europe pursueing the balance of Pacific and Western influences.

Fatu Feu’u is a senior artist acknowledged as both a leader and mentor within the Pacific arts community in New Zealand. Feu’u grew up in the village of Poutasi in Western Samoa and immigrated to New Zealand in 1966 at the age of 20. He has been an exhibiting artist since the early 1980s and became a full-time artist in 1988.

Fatu is a multi-media artist and while primarily a painter, he explores a range of other mediums including bronze, wood and stone sculpture, pottery design, lithographs, woodcuts and glass works (both stained and etched). Fatu gains inspiration from Polynesian art forms such as siapo (bark cloth), tatau (tattooing), weaving, carving and ceremonial mask making.  In these forms he has discovered a rich lexicon of motifs and compositional structures. Fatu's works frequently blend traditional and contemporary elements, incorporating a range of influences, inspirations, techniques and motifs from Samoa and Aotearoa and more generally from Euro-American to Pacific cultures.

Fatu Feu’u has exhibited widely throughout New Zealand and has been included in significant exhibitions such as ‘Bottled Ocean’ Wellington City Gallery 1994, the Australian Contemoporary Art Fair 1998, ‘Pacific Renaissance’ 1999 at Tjibaou Cultural Centre, New Caledonia and ‘Talofa Samoa’ at the Frankfurt Art Museum, Germany in 1999.

 

I feel there is so much art to be made, so much to be said about being a Samoan New Zealander, so much to say to my children, my mother, the politicians. I paint about the issues that are important to me, anger, love, the land, conservation and our culture, my children."