by Crispin Howarth
The Australian-based international Oceanic Art Society (OAS) is celebrating its quarter of a century recognising and appreciating non-western arts of Australia and the Pacific. It began with a real desire to address the relative lack of recognition of non-western arts and more specifically for the start of the OAS in Sydney was the need to bring more Oceanic art on to public display. Australia is part of the Pacific, bound by geography and entwined history; how terrible it would be if Oceanic art cannot be publicly appreciated and interpreted in Australia? However, from the 1980s onwards, the arts of the Pacific region were steadily less and less represented through exhibitions and permanent galleries in the large sunburnt country. Only recently, in 2019, 40,000 pieces of the magnificent Pacific collections of the Australian Museum were moved to suburban storage far away from the Museum itself.
In order to understand the Antipodean scene for Oceanic art, one needs to go back to the late 1960s. At that time, so much art from Papua New Guinea, especially modern material from the Sepik River, was to be found in Australia – material brought by the container load destined for the American market for ‘primitive’ art as well as swathes of objects brought back by Australians who had lived and worked in the Pacific region. Evidence of interest in the arts of Australia’s closest pacific neighbour was demonstrated with the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 1966 opening a large and impressive exhibition of over 360 works called Melanesian art curated by the Gallery’s deputy director and abstract expressionist artist Tony Tuckson. The Australian Museum showcased its collection with a large permanent gallery containing hundreds of objects – as Moore’s 1968 catalogue Melanesian Art in the Australian Museum attests. Between these two institutions and the availability of art through auction rooms, specialist dealers with an eye, such as Joseph Neumann, Stephen Kellner, Hungry Horse Gallery, HM Lissauer, Senta Taft and others, there was more than enough accessibility to Oceanic art to captivate and inspire Australian and visiting collectors well into the 1970s and 1980s as collector Christine Koziel recounts[i]:
“Tribal artifacts illuminated the pages of glossy decor magazines. Hidden gems lurked at every auction – all that was needed was ‘a good eye’. Collectors came back from the field with wondrous finds. Prices had not yet soared, and stories abounded of ‘newbies’ who had scored museum pieces.”
Within the cultural realms of museums, directions change, nothing remains the same and so by the early 1990s the Australian Museum in Sydney and other institutions around Australia had dissolved their Pacific galleries in order to make way for other displays[ii]. The arts of the Pacific region were steadily less and less represented through exhibitions and permanent galleries in the country. According to collector Evarne Coote, the dwindling public displays of Oceanic art in museums was often a subject of discussion when collectors and dealers met up in commercial galleries, such as the Paulian Association’s New Guinea Primitive Arts (managed by Geoff Carey and Chris Boylan) or at Senta Taft’s Galleries Primitif managed by Leo Fleischman. These galleries provided the lure of art and became unofficial meeting centres; invariably, conversations revolved around what could be done to influence museums to show more of their collections[iii].
It is in this context South Australian curator Barry Craig[iv] wrote that the founding members of the Oceanic Art Society were appalled by the fact that the Australian Museum, an institution which has a collection of over 60,000 mainly Melanesian objects, had no significant representation for visitors. As Massim authority Harry Beran recollects on the formal constitution of the OAS during a meeting at collector Elizabeth Pryce’s home[v]:
“In 1995 some Sydney-siders interested in Oceanic art met to consider what could be done to encourage the Australian Museum to exhibit more Oceanic art. This was some time after the closure of the museum’s Melanesian Gallery … and whose contents were published in David Moore’s catalogue Melanesian Art in the Australian Museum (1968).
I was so impressed by the enthusiasm for Oceanic art shown by those who attended the meeting that I suggested that a society of people interested in Oceanic art be created. It was indeed formed with the aim of furthering the appreciation and understanding of Oceanic art.”
It was felt by all present that the founding President should carry the gravitas of an academic with connections to staff in museums and university anthropology departments and could reach out to gain public speakers for OAS meetings. Subsequently, in short time, Harry was elected the Society’s first President[vi]. The Vice-President role was assigned to dealer Chris Boylan, Evarne Coote became secretary, Elizabeth Pryce as treasurer and the committee members were Todd Barlin, Christine Koziel, Greta North, John Rix, Peter Thursby, and Aaron Vogelnest. The defining spirit of the OAS was one of empowerment: through a range of activities the OAS could influence the museums of Australia so Oceanic art would no longer be hidden away from sight.
Following the formation of the Society[vii], the first meeting was held at the Australian Museum on October 15, 1995. This meeting comprised a lecture by Professor Nicholas Thomas from the Australian National University, aptly titled Oceanic Art: the Australian Perspective[viii]. For the next quarter of the century meetings were held mostly at the Australian Museum, but occasionally at the Art Gallery of New South Wales and at the Macleay Museum (University of Sydney). These meetings gave a lively social dimension to the Society with refreshments prior to each speaker’s presentation and opportunity to dine with them at a local restaurant afterwards.
Within its first year the OAS had over 100 members and an ambition to deliver a series of lectures by international authorities of Oceanic Art, create exhibitions and courses, produce publications and have its own newsletter. The OAS Newsletter, today a Journal, began with founding editor Peter Thursby overseeing the first issue in January 1996. During 1997 David Said took the editorial reins and pulled together news and articles from contributors all over the world. South Australian based Jim Elmslie stepped into the role in 2011 and has transformed the Newsletter into a colour Journal[ix]. Over 118 issues have been published, containing summaries of the most recent speakers’ lectures and other articles including object studies where masterpieces have been brought to light, conservational advice, collector interviews and more. In 1998, Noelle Rathmell-Stiels created the domain name www.oceanicartsociety.org.au and set up the OAS website which she is still managing. The most recent five years of Journals are available in PDF on the OAS website.
The OAS conducted one well-attended course on Oceanic art during its first decade of existence[x] and held small tribal art fairs where collectors could offer their treasures for sale. The annual art fairs have now been renamed the Sydney Oceanic Arts Fair; they are now held in the iconic buildings of the National Art School in conjunction with one or two other events such as lectures.
During the society’s first decade, the OAS (its committee and members) also worked hard in curating exhibitions of Oceanic art primarily loaned from Society members. The first, Collector’s Choice: Oceanic and Indonesian Art, was held at the Nomadic Rug Traders Gallery in 1998. The catalogue accompanying this was the first OAS publication (Beran 1998); unusually for the time, each artwork had a short piece of contextual information written by its lender and the reasons why the object especially appealed to the collector. There were 102 objects loaned by 90 collectors, showing the breadth of Oceanic art held in private Australian collections and underlining the depth of passion of OAS members for collecting the art.
Quickly following on from the first exhibition, the second: Adorned: Traditional Jewellery and Body Decoration was held at the Macleay Museum the following year. This exhibition on adornment from the Pacific also featured Aboriginal objects; again, most pieces came from members’ collections which were complemented by selected objects from the Museum’s own collection, much of which had never been shown before. The exhibition and catalogue were curated by Anna Edmundson, a Curator at the Macleay Museum and dealer Chris Boylan. Significantly the catalogue (Edmundson & Boylan 1999) was the first to be published on the ethnographical collections of the Macleay Museum and apparently the first on Aboriginal and Pacific adornments.
The third exhibition Shields of Melanesia curated by Geoff Carey and other members was held at the Sydney College of the Arts, then at the University of Sydney Rozelle Campus. It coincided with the 2000 Olympic Games and comprised a huge array of members’ shields creating a dazzling display. The catalogue publication became a larger project drawing in many writers, collectors and academics. The book Shields of Melanesia (Edited by Harry Beran and Barry Craig) was eventually published in 2005 and became a benchmark for Oceanic art reference books giving as much information as possible on that remarkable art form.
Further exhibitions were held including one at the Caspian Gallery by art dealer Bill Evans and another with a wide range of arts called First Arts – Melanesian Art at the Presbyterian Ladies College Croydon in 2003 curated by Eric Coote and Anita Ellis. The catalogue for this (Coote 2005) was later published by the OAS on CD. A further publication by the OAS was Art of Oro Province, a 130-page survey released on CD in 2009. This was the culmination of two years of research by Harry Beran and Edward Aguirre.
By the mid-2000s the OAS membership base was solid enough to begin considering other events. A series of Forums was initiated to bring together members of the society from across the country and the world to hear presentations from highly regarded speakers on Oceanic art, and to see beautiful pieces, both in museums and in their storage areas. The then President, the late David Baker and Geoff Carey organised the first OAS forum held in Canberra at the National Gallery of Australia in late 2007. The inaugural Forum was naturally a boutique affair with some forty attendees – one Melbourne member appeared with a van loaded with ethnographic objects to set up an open-air gallery for brisk trade! From this beginning, the OAS is now planning its tenth and eleventh Forums; the past decade has seen Forums hosted at the Australian Museum and the Art Gallery of New South Wales both in Sydney, the National Gallery of Victoria, the Ian Potter Museum of Art and Museum Victoria in Melbourne, and the Museum of Queensland in Brisbane. Most notable was the forum hosted by the South Australian Museum in Adelaide as its rich display (the largest in Australia) of over 2000 Pacific objects created a suitable backdrop and several presentations were focused upon the displays themselves.
A feature of each Forum has been a large, often raucous, dinner event. 2019 Sydney’s Forum dinner included remarkable singing from Maori and Papua New Guinean attendees and other dinners have included auctions of art, with heated bidding, during festivities. The OAS has sociality at its core as the fourth OAS President, Peter McCabe, recalls[xi]:
“What impressed me at first was the camaraderie between members – in large part this was not just because of their appreciation of Oceanic art but also a shared experience that many had of living in Papua New Guinea. Over the years I have learned a great deal about PNG art from those OAS members – information that is not easily gleaned from books: how old various pieces are, what purpose they served, which pieces were made for use and which for sale: how to recognise a masterpiece – and how to recognise a fake.”
The Forums have gone from strength to strength through the dedication of Society members and their relationship with Museums and Galleries which hold Pacific collections. Several forums were designed to have linkages to exhibitions; the 2015 forum at the National Gallery of Australia coinciding with the opening of the exhibition Myth + Magic: Art of the Sepik River being a prime example. This forum has been the largest to date with over 150 attendees and included a significant keynote presentation by Andrew Moutu, Director of the National Museum and Art Gallery of Papua New Guinea.
The Oceanic Art Society Forums often provide a rare opportunity for members to access collections in museums or in private hands. Attendees enjoyed viewing the Leonard Adam collection held at the Ian Potter Museum in 2008 and in 2015 the National Gallery of Australia’s collection study room was opened with a swathe of Sepik River art for members. At the 8th OAS forum in 2017, held at the Melbourne Savage Club, a private club, OAS Members were privileged to see a collection started in the late 19th century, which now impressively decorates the Club’s halls, corridors, lounges, library and bars with choice early oceanic art from the southern hemisphere especially from Papua New Guinea. Quite outstanding are two New Ireland Malagan poles over twenty feet high situated in the stairwell.
A continuing feature since the OAS’s inception has been holding the majority of its single lecture meetings 4-5 times a year in Sydney with a focus on a different specialist presenter each time. Over the past quarter-century, the very best of Australian Oceanic and Aboriginal art authorities have spoken, including academics, artists, historians, archaeologists, anthropologists and curators including many of indigenous cultural descent; Jim Specht, Natalie Wilson, Pamela Swadling, Helen Dennett, Michael Mel, Brent Kerehona, Jonathon Jones, Jude Philp, Rod Ewins, Grant McCall, Barry Craig and Crispin Howarth. The meetings and forums have also had a long tradition of international speakers on Oceanic art of solid calibre. After the society’s first decade, by the mid-2000s, the OAS had become firmly established with just over 300 members across the world.
In celebration of its 25th year, the OAS was preparing a range of anniversary events, the Sydney Oceanic Art Fair and the 10th Oceanic Art Forum to be hosted by the Melbourne Savage Club, the National Gallery of Victoria and Museum Victoria in later 2020; however, the global COVID-19 pandemic has postponed these events. A quieter glass will be raised to the first quarter century of the OAS at the AGM in Sydney in November 2020 while listening to Matt Poll, the curator of the first exhibition of Australian Indigenous art at the new Chau Chak Wing Museum at the University of Sydney.
Longer-term, the OAS is looking forward to a dynamic and inspiring second quarter-century. Everyone visits Australia at least once in their lives, witness the many international speakers that have addressed the OAS over the years – Eric Kjellgren, Christian Kaufmann, Michael Hamson, Hermione Waterfield, Fergus Clunie, John Friede, Virginia Lee-Webb, Anthony Meyer, Rhys Richards, Maia Nuku, Kevin Conru, Mark Blackburn, Lawrence Foanata, Sam Singer, Andrew Moutu and many others – senior academics, curators, collectors and art dealers all connected to the world of Oceanic art. The OAS, a small antipodean volunteer group of passionate Oceanic art lovers and their dedicated supporters, needs this continued international input and influence to pursue its goal to ‘further the appreciation and understanding of Oceanic art’. The challenges of increasing the interest of young people in the art, getting more people of indigenous descent to share their knowledge and love of their culture, and encouraging publicly-funded institutions to showcase the art and culture to the maximum degree possible – these are all international challenges. The OAS is determined to play its role as part of the international fraternity in pursuit of these goals for another 25 years.
Acknowledgements
To bring together a history of the society has involved many hands, a special recognition must be made to Harry Beran, Evarne Coote, Bill Rathmell, Noelle Rathmell-Stiels and Michael Martin, also a thanks to Todd Barlin, Geoff Carey, Eric Coote, Michael Hamson, Christine Koziel, Peter McCabe and Anthony Meyer.
Bibliography
Barlin, Todd. Fishburn, Kiersten. Tanoi, Leo. Howarth, Crispin. 2014, Oceanic arts Pacifica artworks from the Todd Barlin collection Casula, NSW: Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre
Beran, Harry (ed). Craig, Barry (ed), Field, Doug. Bloom, Cameron. 2005, Shields of Melanesia. Adelaide: Crawford House Publishing
Beran, Harry (ed). (with photographs by Rebecca Chrisp) 1998, Collector’s Choice: Oceanic and Indonesian Art. Adelaide: Crawford House Press
Beran, Harry and Aguirre, Edward. 2009, The art of Oro Province of Papua New Guinea: A preliminary typology, Sydney: Oceanic Art Society (CD)
Coote, Eric. 2005, First Arts: Melanesian Art by Design, Sydney: Oceanic Art Society (CD)
Craig, Barry. 1996, “Out of Sight, Out of Mind? Pacific Collections in Australian Museums” Artlink, vol.16 no.4 pp.12-16.
Edmundson, Anna. Liddle, David. Boylan, Chris. 1999, Adorned: traditional jewellery and body decoration from Australia and the Pacific. Sydney: Macleay Museum & Oceanic Art Society of Australia.
Howarth, Crispin. 2007, “Truly Hidden Treasures: the National Gallery of Australia’s Pacific Arts collection” Tribal magazine, no.47, XII:2, pp. 62-67.
Moore, David. 1968, Melanesian Art in the Australian Museum. Sydney: The Australian Museum Trust.
Thomsett, Susan. 1993, “A History of the Pacific Collections in the Australian Museum, Sydney” Pacific Arts, no. 7, pp. 12–19.
Tuckson, Tony. 1966, Melanesian Art Sydney: Art Gallery of New South Wales
Footnotes
[i] Christine Koziel personal communication – 13/1/20. [ii] See Howarth 2007. The only remaining stalwart at that time was the Pacific Cultures Hall of the South Australian Museum, a significant permanent exhibition gallery which hopefully will remain intact for future generations. [iii] Evarne Coote personal communication 19/12/19. [iv] Craig 1996, p.12. [v] Harry Beran personal communication 24/11/19. I thank Evarne Coote for further details. [vi] The OAS has in the past 25 years had eight Presidents, Harry Beran, Paul Dennett, David Baker, Crispin Howarth, Peter McCabe, Dominic McGeary, David Welch and today, Bill Rathmell. [vii] Initially called the Oceanic Art Society of Sydney (OASS) and over the years the committee has involved the time and dedication of many members, as well as a host of outside advisories too numerous to mention here; however, special mention must be made of the long-serving Secretaries: Evarne Coote, Robin Hodgson and Elizabeth Pryce. [viii] Thomas is now Director of the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in Cambridge and curated the 2018 Royal Academy exhibition Oceania. [ix] Throughout this time the Journal has been laid out by graphic designer David Hourigan. [x] 1997, 1999, 2004 at the University of Sydney in conjunction with the Macleay Museum. [xi] Peter McCabe personal communication 13/1/20.