Pacific multi-disciplinary artist shocks crowd with new works

Transcript

LINDAH LEPOU - What I did was I focused on the subject of birth, death and rebirth, the natural laws of nature and processes of life and the relationship and tension between the physical and non-physical. The tension between male and female gender and my Palagi and Pasifika self and also the tension between the fashion and art world because throughout my whole career thus far, there's always been this discourse between what I am and who I am because the fashion industry would say that I'm too art for the fashion world and then the art world would say I'm too fashion, so I was always stuck in that middle ground and so over the 25 year period as an artist I've always been multi-dimensional in terms of using multiple creative applications, you know my love for fashion, my love for music, my love for performance, film and photography, so those have always been my mediums and for this particular work, I worked on a film and some photography work and a new mini collection of Pacific couture pieces that were an extension of where I'm going right now.

SELA JANE HOPGOOD - How do you incorporate Pacific themes into your work?

LL - At the core of all my work is inspiration from my own Pacific and Palagi lineage. This is where nafa, one genealogy is very crucial because it is the link to the ancestry and mythology and the legends of old, so being fa'afafine as well it's really taught me to focus on areas that no-one can take from me for example no world change or world event could change that fact in terms of where I sit in the family and where I sit in my genealogy and worst case scenario, if there was a family member who wanted to abandon me, they couldn't even do it. That kind of understanding was the one thing that would anchor me and was the launching off point for anything that I create, so that is really the basis of what I do and it's very important.

SJH - So you produced a film during your residency...

LL - The moving image part of the exhibition was a celebration of the last 25 years that I spent building a foundation and what people in the industry fail to realise is that Pacific artistry and artist are naturally multi-dimensional. We're not one dimensional in other words we do one thing. We have multiple resources that we draw from and we come from a history that is multi-dimensional, so the film was a representation of that. It was a digital non-physical documentation of the 25 year collection and I wanted to project the idea that over the 25 year period when I was building a foundation for myself, that these particular pieces came through me to me for me when noone else would and it was time for them to return back to the non-physical to go home and allow the new to come through.