Oceanic Art Society

Promoting the understanding and appreciation of Oceanic art.

OAC Journal Book Reviews

Djalkiri-Yolŋu art, collaborations and collections

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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 […]

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The Stranger Artist:

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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 […]

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War Art & Ritual: Shields from the Pacific

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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 […]

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War Art & Ritual Shields from the Pacific

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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 […]

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Sepik Ramu Art

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Edited by Kevin Conru. 296 pages illustrating 170 objects from three private collections. Photographs by Hughes Dubois. Edition limited to 500 copies, €295. Conru Editions, released in May 2019. Review by Emilie Jolly Sepik Ramu Art celebrates the broad diversity of art productions from the plain of the Sepik and Ramu rivers. This volume, edited […]

Gottfried Lindauer’s New Zealand The Maori Portraits

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Edited by Ngahiraka Mason and Zara Stanhope. Auckland University Press in association with Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki, 20l6. Reviewed by Marina Garlick This splendid tome complements a fascinating exhibition of mainly Maori portraits by Gottfried Lindauer held at the Auckland Art Gallery, Toi o Tāmaki, from October, 2016 to February, 2017 . Smaller […]

War trophies or curios?

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By Barry Craig, Ron Vanderwal and Christine Winter, Museum Victoria, Melbourne, 281 pp. Review by Peter McCabe “Me been talk with you now, now you give three good feller cheers belongina new feller master. NO MORE ‘UM KAISER – GOD SAVE ‘UM KING”.  And with that the locals of Rabaul found out they were under […]

La-Sisi – Malangan Canoe

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By Harold Gallasch and Neil McLeod. Melbourne Publishing Group, 2012. 60 pages with colour illustrations. Review by Jim Elmslie This lavishly illustrated book by OAS members, Harold Gallasch and Neil McLeod tells the story of one exceptional work of Oceanic art – the spectacular La-Sisi canoe. This fine piece will be familiar to many Australian […]