Wolfgang Grulke, 2022, At One Communications, United Kingdom. Reviewed by Rebecca Conway, curator ethnography Macleay Collections, Chau Chak Wing Museum, University of Sydney Wolfgang Grulke has applied his passion, collection, and connections to produce a richly illustrated book on the body adornments of the ‘South Seas’. Through it he shares his journey of collecting in […]
OAC Journal Book Reviews
Tattooed History: The Story of Mokomokai
2021, 180 pages, Robert K. Paterson, 5 continents www.fivecontinents.com Reviewed by Crispin Howarth Every once in a while, a publication comes along which deep dives into a specific Pacific subject. This is one of those rare publications and it is likely to be the sole reference for these cultural objects for some time to come. […]
Balgo: The Creative Country
2021, 396 pages, John Carty, UWA Publishing Crawley WA Review by Margaret Cassidy While in my final term break of my undergraduate degree in Art History in 1986 I visited the Adult Education Centre at Balgo (Wirrimanu), a remote Aboriginal community on the edge of the Great Sandy Desert at its intersection with the Kimberley […]
Man Who Cannot Die – Phantom Shields of the New Guinea Highlands
2021, 296 pages, Edited by Jonathan Fogel, with contributions from Chris Boylan, Bruce Cree, Hubert Langmann, Kevin Patrick, and Jessica Lindsey Phillips. Sydney & Toronto: Boylan and Phillips. Reviewed by Noelle Rathmell-Stiels Published just weeks after the comic book superhero, The Phantom, celebrated his 85th birthday, this new book will appeal to everyone interested in a unique […]
The Whole Picture
Image: George Nuku, 2021, The red wall, lithographs of the Atlas du voyage de l’Astrolabe, reworked and polystyrene frame at Musée Hèbre Rochefort, France. Photograph: Clémentine Débrosse. 2020, 304 pages, Alice Procter, Cassell Books, London Reviewed by Margaret Cassidy Australian born Alice Procter grew up in Hong Kong and London and completed her university studies at the University College […]
Djalkiri-Yolŋu art, collaborations and collections
2021, 320 pages, Edited by Rebecca J. Conway, Sydney University Press Reviewed by Lindy Allen and Louise Hamby Djalkiri-Yolŋu art, collaborations and collections is an elegantly designed book produced to coincide with the exhibition Gululu dhuwala djalkiri: welcome to the Yolŋu foundations in the University of Sydney’s new Chau Chak Wing Museum that opened in November 2020. It […]
The Stranger Artist:
Life at the edge of Kimberley painting 2020, 278 pages, Quentin Sprague, Hardie Grant Books, Melbourne. Reviewed by Margaret Cassidy The rise of the Aboriginal art industry in the 1980s and 1990s is full of characters, myths and legends. For art lovers living in the coastal cities of Australia or around the world, great indigenous […]
The Warrior, the Voyager, and the Artist
Margaret Cassidy reviews ‘The Warrior, the Voyager, and the Artist’ – Three Lives in an Age of Empire by Kate Fullagar, Yale University Press, New Haven and London.
War Art & Ritual: Shields from the Pacific
Edited by Bill Evans, Two Volumes, 518 pages, 140 Shields illustrated with additional images, eight essays and introduction. Published by William Nathaniel Evans, Woollahra, NSW, Australia, 2019. Reviewed by James Elmslie This lavish and beautifully produced book by Bill Evans is a rich resource for anyone with an interest in the shields of the Pacific […]
War Art & Ritual Shields from the Pacific
2019, 2 vols boxed, 484 pages, Bill Evans (ed), private press Bill Evans, Sydney, 750 copies. Reviewed by Crispin Howarth This is an ambitious work, signalling the culmination of a lifetime’s passion upon one single form of material culture by Bill Evans, a Sydney based art dealer. Volume one has firm focus on shields from […]