Ernst Heinrich: An Extraordinary Collector
The book "Ernst Heinrich: An Extraordinary Collector" chronicles the life and legacy of Ernst Heinrich, highlighting his significant contributions to collecting Oceanic art in 20th-century Europe.
OAC Journal Book Reviews
Living Art Papua New Guinea
The title of this book summarises so simply but accurately the contents of this important book that was launched at the Oceanic Art Society’s XIII Forum “Papua New Guinea Art: Past, Present, Future” in Canberra celebrating Papua New Guinea’s (PNG) arts.
Sea of Islands: Exploring Objects, Stories, and Memories from Ocean
By Carol E. Mayer, 2025, 226 pages, Museum of Anthropology at University of British Columbia, Vancouver. Review by Margaret Cassidy
MELANESIA – Travels in Black Oceania
Hamish McDonald, 2025, 330 pages, Black Ink. Review by John Greenshields Quite by chance I sat next to Hamish McDonald at the OAS Forum in Brisbane in 2013. He was …
The Gulf of Papua through the lens and diaries of Kathleen Haddon
An English Girl in New Guinea: Kathleen Haddon’s Journal and Photographs from New Guinea 1914. Kathleen Haddon, edited by Virginia Lee-Webb and Jonathon Fogel. Hardcover, 192 pages, over 200 B/W photographs. …
SEA Art: South East Asian Art
Ana and Antonio Casanovas have recently published this lavishly illustrated volume which is an indispensable reference companion for all those interested in the aesthetics of the material art of Southeast Asia and Oceania and in the evolution of the earliest known human cultures.
Sun & Shadow: Art of the Spinifex People
2023, 384 pages, John Carty & Luke Scholes, Upswell Publishing. Review by Margaret Cassidy Opening this dark blue bound book launches the reader forth into the colour and patterns of …
Rover – From Warmun to Venice
2023, 57 pages, JD Mittman, Burrinja Review by Margaret Cassidy Warmun in the East Kimberleys is indeed a long way from Venice but both are places of great beauty and …
The Yalaku — History and Warfare in the Middle Sepik
2023, 222 pages, by Ross Bowden, published by Sean Kingston Publishing, Canon Pyon, Herefordshire, UK. Review by Barry Craig Vol. 28,4 of the OAS Journal featured a review by Bill Rathmell of …
We are the sea: Oceania: The Shape of Time
2023, pages, Maia Nuku, Met Publications, New York, Distributed by Yale University Press. Reviewed by Erin Vink (Ngiyampaa), Curator, First Nations art (local and global), AGNSW Oceania: The Shape of …
Maḏayin: Eight Decades of Australian Bark Paintings from Yirrkala – Waltjaṉ ga Waltjaṉbuy Yolŋuwu Miny’tji Yirrkalawuy
2022, 352 pages, edited by Wukuṉ Waṉambi, Henry Skerritt and Kade McDonald, published by Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection of the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, USA and Delmonico Books, New York, …
Art and Creativity in a Guinea Society:The Kwoma in Cross-Cultural Perspective
This book really is a “must read” for those of us whose interest in Oceanic or any other kind of Indigenous art is primarily aesthetic and not underpinned by much, if any, anthropological or art-history expertise.
Polynesian Art — The vast world of Polynesia in a single volume
2023, 272 pages, edited by Kevin Conru, Conru Editions, Brussels Reviewed by Crispin Howarth In June, Lempertz Art house and Auction rooms hosted a spectacular exhibition titled Polynesian Art.The exhibition was only …
Masked Histories: Turtle Shell Masks and Torres Strait Islander People
2022, 215 pages, Leah Lui-Chivizhe, The Miegunyah Press, Melbourne University Publishing Review by Stan Florek I opened this book with great anticipation. My interest in Torres Strait Islander culture and …
Ma’ori
2023, 352 pages, Elise Patole-Edoumba & Helene Guiot, La Geste www.gesteditions.com Review by Pierre Laffont Thanks to an alert on the Oceanic Art Society’s Facebook page, I participated in the …
Magic Masks and Figures from Oceania
Leif Birger Holmstedt, Torso Publishing, 2021, 158 pages. Review by Jim Elmslie The strength of this book is in its excellent images, many previously unpublished. The images are mostly of …
Uli: Powerful Ancestors from the Pacific
2021, 392 pages, Jean-Philippe Beaulieu, Primedia, Bornival, Belgium. Review by Noelle Rathmell-Stiels This superb book has been six years in the making, but it is well worth the wait. In …
ADORNED by nature: Adornment, exchange & myth in the South Seas
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, …
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. …
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 …
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 …
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, …
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 …
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 …