Exhibition: 7 November – 6 December 2025
Opening Event: Saturday 8 November 5 – 7pm | Artist Talk 4 – 5pm
In Lanu Lanu: The Colour of Language, Samuel Tupou extends upon his ongoing dialogue with Tongan heritage, language, and migration through the lens of colourful abstraction. Engaging colour as a universal mode of communication, Tupou reinterprets the structural motifs of tapa cloth, tattoo, and Lapita pottery into compositions that balance intuition and formal precision. His vivid geometries chart a space between cultural memory and modernist inquiry, revealing abstraction as both a site of displacement and reconnection. Essay writer David Broker, states that, “Lanu Lanu: The Colour of Language is the result of the twists and turns that artists who have multicultural influences might experience over a lifetime”. The hanging fringes, inspired by the brightly coloured threads of Tongan fala mats, articulate a point of cultural convergence where natural fibre meets synthetic material and tradition meets adaptation. In this body of work, Tupou transforms inherited forms into a contemporary visual language that speaks to resilience, hybridity, and the evolving nature of Pacific identity.
