This edition of the Journal features Barry Craig’s account of the Pacific collection at the new Wantok Place Museum in North Adelaide as well as Jim Elmslie’s story behind the recent sales with remarkable provenance of works from the Hermannsburg school in Central Australia. We’ve introduced a new feature, the President’s Corner, where Bill Rathmell interviewed Nick Mitzevich, Director of the National Gallery of Australia, following news reports of the deaccession of Pacific pieces from the collection.
OAC Journal Cover Stories
OAS responds with flexibility during COVID-19
The worldwide virus lockdown has hit all aspects of art and culture particularly hard. Cultural spaces and gatherings are often run on a low budget and it is hard to see some of them recovering. As well, the Oceanic and Aboriginal communities that are the custodians of the art and culture that we revere are […]
Hongi Hika: The Legacy Continues
Modern research continues to reveal secrets long held in uncatalogued documents and artefacts in rich archives. The centrepiece of this edition is the story of current research to identify which of three early Maori carvings is the wooden self-portrait of rangatira (chief) Hongi Hika carved from a fencepost at the farm of missionary Reverend Samuel Marsden in […]
Curiosity Remains a Driving Force
Image: Mathias Kauage ‘Independence Celebration 1999’, Andrew Baker Collection. Image by Mick Richards. The desire to know – curiosity – has long been a motivating force in human endeavour. In this issue of the OAS Journal we see that evident nearly 200 years ago in the travels of Frenchman Dumont d’Urville in Melanesia (a term […]
The Story Keeps Unfolding
With so much information available in the modern digital age it sometimes feels that we know, collectively, almost everything. In this edition Professor Ian McNiven shows us that this is wrong and that something as simple as the geographic origin of an artefact is still a matter of research. In Ian’s thought provoking paper, Beyond Bridge […]
Times Are A Changing
In this issue of the of the OAS Journal we are fortunate to have Dr Maia Nuku, from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, chart the evolution of that institution over the last 50 years, particularly in the decisions taken that resulted in its present day collections of Pacific art. Through the actions […]
Collectors and Collections: OAS Forum 2019 a Triumph
The 2019 Oceanic Art Society Forum was an intellectual and emotional odyssey. Oceanic art represents and encompasses many things: sublime beauty and irresistible mystery; cultural treasure; markers of colonial dispossession and loss, but also continuity and hope. That indeed is what Oceanic art is: objects that bind people through time; binding those who made them […]
A Successful Year – President’s Report on 2018
The Oceanic Art Society’s Annual General Meeting was held on 10th November at the Middle Harbour 16ft Skiff Club, Mosman NSW – a lovely venue on a sunny day. Twenty-one members were present, with apologies from three more. After the formalities, the President, Bill Rathmell, provided a brief report on the state of the Society, […]
The Art of Collecting
By Jim Elmslie Oceanic Art means different things to different people. Made by indigenous peoples for traditional cultural and utilitarian practice, artefacts are now prized by many people far removed from their geographical origins. Just why this is so is sometimes hard to fathom. In the last edition of the OAS Journal, and continuing in […]
Different Ways of Seeing
by Jim Elmslie Oceanic art creates fascination on many levels. In this edition of the OAS Journal we look at two quite different ways of seeing traditional artefacts. To Dr. Michael Mel, a Papua New Guinean scholar who grew up in a Highlands village before setting off on his own personal odyssey, they are the […]