Profile: Brian Fuata

 

Brian Fuata’s new work to be presented at Sumer gallery in Tāmaki Makaurau/Auckland builds on the artist’s rigorous email performances through which he disseminates an email to a selected audience.

 

These email performances were started at a time when the artist was living regionally and wanting to be present with a wider audience. For the artist, they demonstrate an expanded notion of performance, intimacy and relationality.

 

These emails often appear as installations and prints, the objects acting as artefacts within Fuata’s constructed scenes. Fuata’s email performances have been staged at the Performa Biennial where he had the chance to collaborate with artist Ray Johnson – the king of correspondence art who has been working in the format since the 1950s. Significantly, Johnson is known for using the term nothings to describe his practice in reaction to the Happenings (the forerunners of performance art) which were a crucial performance aspect of the Fluxus repertoire.