The Baining – A Night to Remember
by Harold Gallasch It was to be a night like no other. It all started with a late afternoon drive from Kerevat, and the Lowlands Agriculture Experiment Station where I …
Stories from all OAS Journal Volumes
Tattooed History: The Story of Mokomokai
2021, 180 pages, Robert K. Paterson, 5 continents www.fivecontinents.com Reviewed by Crispin Howarth Every once in a while, a publication comes along which deep dives into a specific Pacific subject. …
Pacific Views
Photography gallery, Chau Chak Wing Museum, University of Sydney. Until 24 July 2022. Reviewed by Bill Rathmell and Margaret Cassidy Time flies and passes, and only our death manages to …
Balgo: The Creative Country
2021, 396 pages, John Carty, UWA Publishing Crawley WA Review by Margaret Cassidy While in my final term break of my undergraduate degree in Art History in 1986 I visited …
At the intersection of ancient and contemporary
This edition of the Journal includes articles about the early encounters between European missionaries and Aboriginal Australians in Central Australia and European anthropologists and people from the Torres Strait and …
Sydney Oceanic Art Fair – SAOF 2021
by Bill Rathmell The COVID-19 pandemic restrictions lifted in Sydney in time for SOAF 2021 to be held, complete with masks and vaccination checks at the National Art School on …
When plastic becomes sacred, George Nuku’s Bottled Ocean project
By Garance Nyssen On 14 July 2019, in the port district of the Gabut in La Rochelle, south-western France, George Nuku was hurrying to finish a large whale made from …
Hermannsburg: the Barossa Connection
By Sally Goers Fox This recent exhibition in the Barossa Regional Gallery in Tanunda, South Australia highlights the longstanding relationships and reciprocity between the Barossa Valley and the Hermannsburg/Ntaria community …
Pacific artists respond to Matisse
Matisse Alive exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales 23 Oct 2021 – 3 April 2022 Review by Margaret Cassidy Artist projects from around and across the Pacific, …
Recording Kastom: Alfred Haddon’s Journals from the Torres Strait and New Guinea, 1888 and 1898
2020, 378 pages, Edited by Anita Herle and Jude Philp. In association with the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Cambridge. Sydney University Press. Review by Crispin Howarth Alfred …
The Agile Art World
Being agile and pivoting are words long associated with innovation and the tech world. However, they are now commonly being used in the art world to describe the quick responses …
Massim canoes in the Milne Bay Province,Papua New Guinea
by David Payne The traditional canoes of the Massim region of the Milne Bay Province of Papua New Guinea (PNG) are colourful, stylish, and sophisticated. These traditional wooden canoes are …
Man Who Cannot Die – Phantom Shields of the New Guinea Highlands – Book launch talk
Chris Boylan These shields are from the New Guinea Highlands and a major feature is their colour. This is very much part of the New Guinea tradition to have colourful …
Man Who Cannot Die – Phantom Shields of the New Guinea Highlands
2021, 296 pages, Edited by Jonathan Fogel, with contributions from Chris Boylan, Bruce Cree, Hubert Langmann, Kevin Patrick, and Jessica Lindsey Phillips. Sydney & Toronto: Boylan and Phillips. Reviewed by Noelle …
Georgina Beier 1938 – 2021
By Keith Jackson Georgina Beier, called the ‘founding mother’ of contemporary art in Papua New Guinea, died in Sydney on Sunday 11 July 2021 aged 82. Her husband, Ulli Beier …
The Whole Picture
Image: George Nuku, 2021, The red wall, lithographs of the Atlas du voyage de l’Astrolabe, reworked and polystyrene frame at Musée Hèbre Rochefort, France. Photograph: Clémentine Débrosse. 2020, 304 pages, Alice Procter, Cassell Books, …
Diverse Studies of Individual Oceanic Art Objects
Oceanic art can be studied from a number of angles. This art can be approached from an anthropological or ethnographic aspect and from the perspective of art history or visual …
Travels of the Lily: from Lake Sentani to the National Gallery
by Crispin Howarth Main image caption: Le Lys as currently displayed in the exhibition ‘Emotional Bodies’ next to works by artists including Miro, Epstein and Modigliani. Image courtesy National Gallery of …
Solomon Islands carved coconut used in the practice of teeth blackening
Clémentine Débrosse In 1568, Álvaro de Mendaña y Neira was the first European to visit the Archipelago now known as the Solomon Islands. At the time, Mendaña y Neira was …
Djalkiri-Yolŋu art, collaborations and collections
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 …
Creatures: Ochred, Pokered, Carved & Twined
Main image caption: Yibiyung Roma Winar, Noongar Language, Mountain Devil, c.1998. Perth, Western Australia. Emu Egg, 9.5 x 15 x 8.5 cm. Berndt Museum of Anthropology Collection [1998/0058] Presented by the Berndt …
Harry Beran | Tributes received by the OAS
Main image caption: Dr Harry Beran interviews residents of Egum Islet in Milne Bay in October 2017. Photograph: Luke Wong, ABC. Reproduced with permission of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Scholar, author …
War Art and Ritual: Visit to Bill Evans’s Shield Collection
Reviewed by Bill Rathmell Whenever I go to an art gallery or museum show, I buy the catalogue (or I don’t) on the basis of the “wow” factor of the …
New places, new ways of engaging across cultures
The summer of 2020-2021 has seen the opening of some significant new or renovated/expanded museums from the east to the west coast in Australia. Those of us in Sydney have …