by Jim Elmslie Caption: The Awan with Sophie Parker, of ArtLab, Adelaide, South Australia. Image credit: Alice Beale. This large body-mask, called a tumbuan in tok-pisin, comes from the Iatmul people of the Middle Sepik River, PNG, and played an important role in traditional ritual life. Initially it was thought to pertain to the naven ceremony of the Iatmul people […]
The Social Life of Aboriginal Breastplates: Encoded Objects of Colonisation
By Angel Bottaro The preservation of Aboriginal breastplates, with a degree of empathetic imagination, evoke powerful stories of colonisation. The physical weight of the objects around one’s neck and the ascriptions given to them – gorgets, brass shields, but most commonly ‘King’ and ‘Queen’ plates – made them highly charged and politicised objects from the […]
Slit Gongs of the Sepik and Madang Provinces
By Barry Craig, South Australian Museum I have prepared a paper from a dataset of a large number of slit gongs of the Sepik and lower Ramu region, documented during field surveys in 1981, 1982 and 1983, to demonstrate slit gong variations and their repertoire of sculptural form. That paper has too many images to […]