A former colleague recently shared her five communications tips – question the news value; know the audience; highlight the lead; feature people, not objects; and create visual elements – which led me to thinking about this Journal. While art lovers are attracted to art for aesthetic and other reasons, it is the stories about art objects that resonate the most with readers.
Everyone wants to know more about an art object, who was the creator, why did they make this item, what was the story they were trying to tell? Too often in the past, it was outsiders talking about First Nations creators. Last year, Bougainville-born curator Sana Balai, a Hako Elder, spoke how her presence as a curator in museums and other institutional spaces breaks the mould of outsiders speaking on behalf of Pacific people. As a trailblazer, she hopes that people after her do not have to go through the same belittlement and discrimination in arts institutions that she experienced1.
This Journal features a diverse mix of authors and objects. There is great interest in the revival of traditional arts making and skills as well as a continuing fascination in the stories represented in cultural objects and with the people who tell those stories.
Pātaka art + Museum Māori/Moana Curator Jacki Leota-Mua has reviewed an exhibition of i-Kiribati tibuta that was open late last year in the Pātaka art + Museum in Porirua, Aotearoa New Zealand. The curators are currently exploring other venues within and across Aotearoa and overseas with the homeland but also Australia and the UK. French member Pierre Laffont reports on recent object-focused Dutch-based research into early encounters between the Dutch and Tiwi islanders.
Obituaries are often one of the places that we read the stories of the many and varied creators and storytellers of Oceanic art.
Current OAS President Jim Elmslie has provided the colourful story of Bill Evans, who was one of the founders of the Oceanic Art Society and whose name became synonymous with shields: Aboriginal and Pacific but also Dyak and Indonesian. Bill was very generous in his sharing of the stories of Oceanic shields collating and publishing extensive books with academic collaborators.
New York born conceptual contemporary artist Shiva Lynn Burgos, who currently lives between London, Paris and Papua New Guinea, has provided the story of master artist Chief Paul Yapmunggwiyo Kongi, chief of Mariwai Village of the Kwoma people from the Sepik River region in Papua New Guinea who was the last living artist to contribute to the iconic Ceremonial House Ceiling, also known as the Kwoma Ceiling in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Barry Craig has reviewed Ross Bowden’s latest book The Yalaku and I had the very special privilege of seeing Te Rā, the magnificent precontact Māori woven sail locked up out of sight in the British Museum for the last two centuries in the Te Rā: Navigating Home exhibition currently in Auckland. The object is out!
A similar diverse mix of speakers and topics will be reflected in the upcoming OAS Forum 2024 to be held in early August in Sydney.
Margaret Cassidy
Footnote: 1 Sana Balai in ‘Narrating Our Bodies in Research-Creation’, Australian Association for Pacific Studies, YouTube, 23 August 2023, 31:00, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVx9L8Zfl88&t=2377s.
