Oceanic Art Society

Promoting the understanding and appreciation of Oceanic art.

Stories from all OAS Journal Volumes

An Australian at the 2019 Paris Parcours des Mondes

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by Noelle Rathmell-Stiels It’s still really the only one of its kind in the world! The eighteenth iteration of the Parcours des Mondes International Art Fair was held from 10 to 15 September in balmy autumn weather in the Saint-Germain-des-Près quartier of Paris. With a new drawcard: archaeology. Amongst sixty-five dealers of calibre this year, eight were offering Egyptian, […]

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Curiosity Remains a Driving Force

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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

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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 […]

Australian Museum’s Cultural Collections Centre Opens in Western Sydney

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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 […]

Beyond bridge and barrier: Torres Strait and curious artefact distributions between Queensland and New Guinea

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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 […]

Massim Canoes – drawings of the unique outrigger canoes from the Solomon Seas

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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 […]

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 […]

Times Are A Changing

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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 […]

Pacific Arts Association International Symposium, March 24 – 28, Brisbane

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By Pierre Laffont The XIII Pacific Art Association (“PAA”) international Symposium took place over four days on 24-28 March in Brisbane. It was organised by the Queensland Museum in partnership with all the major cultural institutions on the South Bank of Brisbane (Queensland Performing Arts Centre, Queensland Gallery/ Gallery of Modern Art (“GOMA”), State Library […]