Promoting the understanding and appreciation of Oceanic art.
Story By Crispin Howarth | Photo Caption: Rapa Nui (Easter Island), Moai Kavakava, 18th-mid 19th century. Wood, bone, obsidian. Private Australian collection. There is perhaps nowhere in the world as isolated and remote as Rapa Nui (Easter Island). Known primarily for the enigmatic stone monolith giants, moai, found across its plains and coastlines, it is in wood […]
Interview by Jim Elmsie | Photo Caption: Rapa Nui (Easter Island), Moai Kavakava, 18th-mid 19th century. Wood, bone, obsidian. Private Australian collection. Jim Elmsie: Warren Campbell, can you explain what Bubble Art is and how it operates? WC: For me, the name ‘Bubble’ captures the diversity of tribal cultures, and the fragility of those cultures in the technological […]
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 […]
Story by Reg MacDonald | Photo Caption: The late Leonard French in his home cum studio, a 19th century mill at Heathcote, Central Victoria. In the shadow box above his head is an ancient and rare Boiken figure. Melanesian artefacts played a big hand in the creative life of Leonard French, the Australian artist who designed […]
Image: Mathias Kauage at Ray Hughes Gallery February 1999. Image by Ben Rushton. Mathias Kauage O.B.E. was Papua New Guinea’s best known and most highly awarded artist of the contemporary era. He was artistically active in the six crucial years leading up to 1975 (when PNG became an independent nation), until 2003 when he died. […]
by Bill Rathmell The Tribal Art Fair Sydney, held by the Oceanic Art Society at the National Art School on 17 August, may not be described as the only one of its kind in the world (as is the Parcours des Mondes, elsewhere in this Journal), it is certainly set fair to become the best in […]
One of the early French navigators whose collection will be viewed in La Rochelle on the OAS Pre-2020 Parcours Tour of South West France. By Pierre Laffont Dumont d’Urville survived three circumnavigations of the earth including through the then-unchartered waters of the South Pacific. He named many locations previously unknown to Europeans, most of them with a […]
Pre-2020 Parcours des Mondes If enough members are interested in viewing the Oceanic Art collections from early French navigators and collectors, the Oceanic Art Society, under the direction of Pierre Laffont, proposes to organize a tour in the South West of France in the 4 days preceding the opening of the September 2020 Parcours des Mondes in Paris. […]
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 […]
