Artwork Information

Teuane Tibbo (born 1893, Upolu, Sāmoa) was the first Sāmoan artist to exhibit her work in a mainstream art gallery in Aotearoa and is regarded as one of the foundational figures in the development of contemporary Pacific art in this country.

Tibbo painted memories of her time spent across different Pacific Islands including Sāmoa and Fiji, offering glimpses of ‘village life’ unshaped by artworld conventions. *Untitled*, 1973 exemplifies characteristics typical of Tibbo’s practice. The scene is viewed from a bird’s-eye view, bringing bright colours and symbolic motifs together into a flat picture plane, and is arranged into striations: coconut palms; figures upon double-hulled vaka (canoe); and a welcoming party of villagers on the shore.

– Ane Tonga, Curator Pacific Art, 2023