Artwork Information

Combining traditional Samoan navigation tools with

iconography that has personal symbolism, Fatu Feu’u’s works are signifiers of cultural identity. Folau, meaning ‘a voyage by sea’, uses a graphic vocabulary of stick maps, frigate birds and wave forms which locates it in New Zealand’s contemporary

Samoan community. Now a senior New Zealand artist and a mentor to young Pacific Islanders, Feu’u recalls how he was encouraged by painters Tony Fomison and Philip Clairmont. Visiting Feu’u’s studio in the late 1970s they were amazed by his work: ‘They’d never seen art like that.’