Promoting the understanding and appreciation of Oceanic art.
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 […]
Image: Centre: Poka Francis in Koranigle, 2017. Photo courtesy Helen Dennett. Left: Arbelo ensnared by python c2002. Right: Soldier c2002. Poka Francis lives in the village of Koranigle, in Simbu Province, in the mountainous highlands of Papua New Guinea. When he was young, Poka had a vision of a man, and later a woman, walking stiffly […]
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 […]
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 […]
By Bill Rathmell, OAS President Half-a-dozen members of the Oceanic Art Society were present on 30th July at the opening of the “Cultural Collections Centre”- the new storage for the bulk of the Pacific Island collections of Sydney’s Australian Museum. Since its inception in 1995, the OAS has tried to lobby for this superb world-renowned […]
By Professor Ian J. McNiven, ARC Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage, Monash Indigenous Studies Centre, Monash University, Melbourne During the nineteenth century Europeans became increasingly aware of the extraordinary diversity of indigenous cultures across New Guinea and Australia. Along with such awareness was a desire by museums, especially in England, Europe, and […]
by Chris Boylan Dominating the hill overlooking Cannes city and the Mediterranean is the ancient medieval castle and tower, now the ethnological museum, of Cannes, Le Musée de la Castre. The museum has a small, but very fine collection of Oceanic art including great Polynesian objects and early New Guinea pieces. An exhibition in the museum […]
Tasman Light Gallery, National Maritime Museum, Sydney – 1 August to 29 September 2019 The Massim culture of Papua New Guinea is home to a unique collection of colourful outrigger canoes used for trade and are vital to the significant inter-island and community exchange of precious artefacts known simply as Kula. Located in the Solomon Sea […]
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 […]
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 […]
