Fatu Feu'u: Ole Malaga
Fatu Feu’u is a noted New Zealand-based Samoan artist, acknowledged as both a leader and mentor within the Pacific arts community. He is best known as 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.
Feu’u grew up in the village of Poutasi, on the island of Upolu in Samoa, immigrating to New Zealand in 1966. He has been exhibiting since the early 1980s, becoming a full-time artist in 1988. Fatu’s work details his personal responses and interpretations of oral histories, myths, stories, songs, traditions and political events in and about Samoa.
An advocate for Pacific arts, Feu’u co-founded Tautai Contemporary Pacific Arts Trust in 1995 with the aim of promoting Pacific visual arts. In 2001 he was awarded the Order of Merit for his services to the arts.
