Recent months have seen Oceanic art enthusiasts gathered for two art fairs in Paris in September and Sydney in October. By all accounts, there was great enthusiasm and artworks. In this edition Noëlle Rathmell-Stiels has been able to compare this year’s Parcour des Mondes in Paris and the Sydney Oceanic Art Fair.
This edition includes some important new scholarship on the artists of Oceania; scholarship on what we would regard as early contact Pacific Islander creative responses to European artistic practices as well as new thoughts about a pre-contact stone spatula. Both include interviews with elderly local inhabitants as important research sources.
Nicolas Garnier has written the first biography of a Bougainville man, Somuk, who may be regarded as the first Modern artist of the Pacific. Nicolas first presented this research at last year’s OAS Forum in Melbourne.
Long term Oceanic collector Stéphane Duckett, a recently retired clinical psychologist whose PhD dissertation was about Rites of Passage and cross-cultural methodologies in psychological research, has posited a new interpretation of a stone lime spatula collected by Abel Abel from Awaiama village near Bartle Bay (Milne Bay Province) in 2009.
With the recent news that John Carty has stepped down from his role as Head of Humanities at the South Australian Museum, it is timely that this edition includes a review of Sun & Shadow: Art of the Spinifex People edited by John Carty and Luke Scholes. John was a great supporter of the 2022 OAS Forum held at the South Australian Museum.
And, regrettably, we are publishing the obituary for yet another long term member and friend of Oceanic Art, the redoubtable Ron Perry.
Looking to the future, planning for a 2025 OAS Forum in November in Canberra has commenced, ably led by Crispin Howarth.
Margaret Cassidy
Image caption: The gathering of Oceanic Art collectors at the recent, highly successful Sydney Oceanic Art Fair Opening Night / Auction held at Art Leven, Redfern, Sydney. More details on back cover.
