Abstracts Organized by Session and Group
Session 1: Group 1
Session 1: Group 2 (Textiles)
Session 1: Group 3
Session 2: Group 1
Session 3: Group 1
Session 3: Group 2
Session 3: Group 3
Session 3: Group 4
Session 3: Group 5
Session 4: Group 1
Session 4: Group 2 (Virtual Repatriation)
Session 5: Group 1
Session 5: Group 2
Session 5: Group 3
Session 5: Group 4
Session 6: Group 1
PIMA Session
Artist Panels
SESSION 1: OBJECTS FROM CENTRAL AND EASTERN POLYNESIA
GROUP 1
Session Chair: Jonathan Mane-Wheoki (reserve chair Michaela Appel)
1:00–1:15pm
Hutton, Grace, Collection Manager, Pacific Cultures, Te Papa Tongarewa, Wellington, New Zealand
Cook Islands collection at Te Papa Tongarewa
Artefacts from the Cook Islands have been collected since the Museum of New Zealand, Te Papa Tongarewa opened in 1865 as the Colonial Museum. I will present an historical overview of the Cook Islands collection and discuss its strengths and weaknesses. I will describe some of the factors influencing its growth, and outline a framework for future collection development. This paper will conclude by highlighting alternative ways for the future sharing of information and knowledge about cultural objects held by institutions like Te Papa Tongarewa.
1:20–1:35pm
Hasell, Jill, Curatorial Assistant, Oceania Section, Department of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas, The British Museum, London, United Kingdom
“Missionary Enterprises” and Modern Presentations of Cook Islands Culture
My paper discusses the large and varied collection of Cook Islands artefacts in the British Museum, some dating from the 18th century. The museum acquired many of these during the 19th century, notably from the London Missionary Society. Their missionaries John Williams and William Wyatt Gill wrote about and collected some of these. Key artefacts in the British Museum’s collection were studied and described by the Polynesian specialist Peter Buck, in Arts and Crafts of the Cook Islands, published in 1944.
The collection includes deity representations, ceremonial artefacts, canoes and model canoes, fishing equipment, weapons, domestic items, barkcloth, garments and personal ornaments. Recent additions are contemporary tivaevae( quilts) collected by Susanne Küchler which feature in her book on the art.
1:40–1:55pm
Wards, Ian, Curator, Exhibitions and Collections, North Otago Museum, Oamaru, New Zealand
The Collecting of HD Skinner: A Cook Islands Case Study
During his tenure as Anthropologist, and later, Director of the Otago Museum, H.D. Skinner assembled the largest Cook Islands collection of any museum in New Zealand. Arguing that these collections were not passively assembled, but were rather formed as the result of a complex web of human interaction, motivation and emotion, they are discussed in conjunction with Skinner’s correspondence, showing how relationships between people, mediated by objects, can guide the mechanics of collection development in the museum environment.
Skinner, like many of his contemporaries in the early twentieth century, saw museum collections as the most important scientific and educational resource for anthropology. To build his museum’s collections towards this end, he used New Zealand’s colonial infrastructure in Polynesia. Much of his collecting was done by proxy through agents in the ‘field’. These agents ranged from the senior ranks of the colonial administration through to isolated commercial traders. The motivations and obligations Skinner fostered amongst these disparate individuals to donate or sell objects to the Otago Museum will be discussed, with particular reference to the trader Drury Low and the Resident Agent Lionel Trenn. In discussing Skinner’s collecting relationships with these two individuals I argue that museum collection development is not a passive process, but multifaceted and politically charged.
2:00–2:15pm
Appel, Michaela, State Museum of Ethnology, Munich, Germany
Female Figures from Aitutaki: Traces of Genealogy and Decent
Taking the female figure with tattoos from Aitutaki in the State Museum of Ethnology in Munich as a point of departure, the paper will look at other known representations from Aitutaki in Museums in Britain and France and New Zealand. A comparison with anthropomorphic images from Rarotonga, Atiu, and possibly from Rurutu and Ra’ivavae in the Austral Islands will show that Eastern Polynesian figurative representations are always metaphors of human origin and ancestry. Ideologies of descent and the respective genealogies were of prime significance for a person’s position in the hierarchical order of society. Genealogies that were traced back to the founding ancestor, either through patrilineal or matrilineal reckoning, were not only important in terms of kinship organization but also with respect to land rights and hereditary political offices. In this sense, they belonged to a person’s most significant assets.
The female Aitutaki figure from the State Museum of Ethnology in Munich displays on both sides an incised, zigzag ornament that reaches from just below the shoulders to the hips. I interpret this ornament as a symbol of the spine and successive generations which could have served as a mnemonic device in reciting genealogies. Although creation myths and genealogical songs usually speak of male gods or ancestors, those traces on this and other female figures suggest that matrilineal genealogies might also have played an important role in Aitutaki.
2:20-2:35pm
Mane-Wheoki, Jonathan, Head of the Elam School of Arts, Auckland University, New Zealand
Contemporary Urban Pacific Art in Aotearoa: A Whakapapa (Keynote Address 3)
GROUP 2: TEXTILES
Session Chair: Adrienne Kaeppler (reserve chair Hilary Scothorn-Tohi)
3:00–3:10pm
Sowell, Teri, Director of Exhibitions and Collections, Oceanside Museum of Art, Oceanside, California, United States
Remembering Jehanne Teilhet-Fisk (1939-2002)
This paper will examine the legacy of Jehanne Teilhet-Fisk and her influence in shaping the field of Polynesian Art History. Jehanne’s publications, along with her teachings, touched crucial aspects of scholarship that remain relevant. She had a long standing interest in the role of women, and thus focused on art produced by women, including tapa cloth, grave art and beauty pageant fashion, especially in the Kingdom of Tonga. She also explored issues of diaspora and hybridity, at a time when it was not quite so fashionable. Perhaps most importantly, Jehanne stressed the role of innovation within tradition, helping to bridge the problematic traditional / modern divide that continues to stress the field.
3:15–3:30pm
Scothorn-Tohi, Hilary, Auckland, New Zealand
Uncovering the Past: A Report on Recent Research with Cook Islands Tapa
Barkcloth of the Cook Islands was part of a significant and diverse tradition of textiles which continues today. This paper will present examples of Cook Islands barkcloth in world ethnographic collections and their significance for contemporary cultural identity.
3:35–3:50pm
Richards, Rhys, Wellington, New Zealand
Locating and Provenancing Austral Island Tapa
3:55–4:10pm
Kaeppler, Adrienne, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., United States
Dangerous Liaisons: Explorers, Missionaries, and Barkcloth Makers
Extending my previous research and publications on animal designs in West Polynesia and sacred barkcloth wrappings from Tahiti, I move into Central Polynesia to explore the possibility of sacred designs on barkcloth. It is proposed that the interaction of eighteenth and nineteenth century explorers and missionaries with the producers of Central Polynesian barkcloth resulted in the end of important sacred traditions of barkcloth manufacture and design that can now only be found in Museums.
4:15–4:30pm
Herda, Phyllis, Anthropology, University of Auckland, New Zealand
The Creation of a New Tradition: Women’s Quilting in the Cook Islands
Women in the Cook Islands value textiles through their creation, conservation and presentation. In the past, this included the making of mats and barkcloth. These textiles were important items of exchange and prestation in the Cook Islands as wealth and status markers. Over the past century Cook Islands women have added quilts, known as tivaevae, to this textile repertoire.
Although not an indigenous textile technology, tivaevae are now a firmly established part of a feminine Cook Islands aesthetic. Cook Islands Maori women create tivaevae to present at important social and life cycle events – including births, marriages, funerals, first hair cutting ceremonies (pakotianga o’ora), graduations etc. – any event worthy of celebration and commemoration. Through their creation, display and gifting, tivaevae embody notions of the Cook Islands feminine self as well as the relation of that self to kin, place, history and modernity.
Despite the centrality of tivaevae in Cook Islands culture and life, they have received comparatively little attention in the historical, anthropological and art history literature on the Cook Islands. This neglect persists for a number of reasons and has led to a lack of critical analysis on the origins of tivaevae in the Cook Islands by implying a fixity of cultural identity and an authority of authenticity which ignores the creative dimension of cultural aesthetics expressed in tivaevae. This paper re-considers the origins of quilting in the Cook Islands, its connection to quilting elsewhere in Eastern Polynesia and its absence in the scholarly literature.
4:35–4:50pm
Horan, Jane, University of Auckland, New Zealand
Cook Islands Tivaivai and the Ritual Economy in Auckland, New Zealand
Tivaivai are beautiful appliquéd or patched coverlets made by Cook Islands women (and some men) both in the Cooks and in the diasporic communities around the Pacific basin. The textiles are vibrant and colorful, and take hours of hand stitching (mostly) to complete. Apart from their aesthetic qualities, tivaivai are the most elite form of gift and the preferred mode of decoration at ceremonial events in what constitutes the Cook Islands ceremonial economy. At events like weddings, funerals, haircuttings and other public events, tivaivai are utilized to honor and adorn in various ways. Tivaivai are also the embodiment of identity for many Cook Islands women in Auckland, as women say ‘You are not a women without tivaivai’. This paper looks at the process of the Cook Islands ritual economy in Auckland, New Zealand and details a number of ceremonial events where tivaivai feature prominently, and looks at the role that tivaivai play in the movement of valuables through the Cook Islands ritual economy.
GROUP 3
Session Chair: Philippe Peltier (reserve chair Karen Jacobs)
5:00–5:15pm
Jacobs, Karen, Lecturer in the Arts of the Pacific, Sainsbury Research Unit, University of East Anglia, Norwich, United Kingdom
The Cartography of Collecting: Mapping the George Bennet Collection Assembled in Central Polynesia (1821-1824)
Together with Reverend Daniel Tyerman, George Bennet had been invited by the London Missionary Society (LMS) to visit their various mission posts. Between September 1821, when Bennet and Tyerman landed in Tahiti and May 1824, when they set sail for New Zealand, they spent their time evaluating the successes of the established mission stations in Central Polynesia. They made their acquaintance with kings and chiefs, spending many hours discussing with them the nature of Christian progress and its concomitant cultural change.
Throughout the voyage Bennet collected a variety of objects, particularly from the Society Islands. From 1823 onwards, he systematically sent cases with objects to Europe. He regularly inscribed the objects detailing what they were or when and where they were collected. The resulting collections concretise his journey’s map; the assemblage of these collections may be regarded as a form of cartography.
This paper aims to map Bennet’s collecting activities by asking what the parties involved in these exchanges understand to be embodied in the material forms that are presented and collected. Ethnographic collections indicate what people were willing to part with and might be testimonies of historical or political changes rendering the objects alienable. Each object sent back by Bennet incarnates relationships and these will be the subject of this paper.
5:20–5:35pm
Peltier, Philippe, Responsable de l'Unité Patrimoniale, Océanie-Insulinde, Musée du quai Branly, Paris, France
Images from Mangareva
In 1842 the « pères de Picpus » disembarked in the Gambier archipelago. Soon all the population was converted to Christianity. Missionaries, but also travellers who visited Mangareva, collected and brought back to Europe “god images” or other objects as “missionary trophies” or testimony of their travel. Despite the fact that the traditional society disappeared at an early date as in many other islands of the region, thanks to the work of Father Laval – a manuscript edited only in 1938 by Alfred Metraux and never translated into English, and the research of Te Rangi Hiroa and travel writing of Primevère Lesson, paradoxically we know much more about the isolated society of the Gambier Islands than any other Polynesian society.
Today only twelve of the “god images” from Mangareva are known in European collections. Following the discovery of a new piece in the Cahors museum, an exhibition was organised in 2009 in Paris and Tahiti. In Paris, all the known god images were re-assembled. This exhibition gave rise to new questions. In this paper we will try to analyse the story of those objects and discuss their interpretation.
5:40–5:55pm
Richards, Rhys, Wellington, New Zealand
'The Stutchbury Bird'
In the Bristol Museum in the UK is an enigmatic wood carving known once as 'the Stutchbury bird.' Its origin is clear for it was collected from Raivavae in 1826 by Samuel Stutchbury, the surgeon for two ships of the London-based Pacific Pearl Fishery Company from 1825 to 1827. His very informative journal is in the Alexander Turnbull Library in Wellington, N.Z. That journal, and a catalogue of their auction in London in July 1827, show that this commercial expedition sold a prodigious quantity of Austral Islands art. Stutchbury chose however not to sell this piece which was later donated to the Bristol Museum as ''A wooden vessel elaborately carved, from High Island, Austral Group.'
This enigmatic wood carving is only 44 cm long and 13 cm broad. At one end it has a shallow spoon and two short 'arms' with turret-like 'hands' reminiscent of the better known Austral Islands 'paddles' The other end is twisted and hollow, and may indicate the original wood was a root from the miro tree. Everywhere it is covered with exquisite fine carving, including the main motifs present on the early 'paddles' and bowls also from Raivavae and Tubuai. But its shape is not really like any known bird, nor indeed like any other existing artifact. Its function remains inexplicable. Which surely begs the question 'Why was it made?'
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SESSION 3: CONTEMPORARY PACIFIC ART AND ARTISTS
GROUP 1
Session Chair: Eric Kjellgren (reserve chair Ron Brownson)
8:30–8:45am
Brownson, Ron, Senior Curator, New Zealand and Pacific Art, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, New Zealand
“Are you looking at me?”: The social media art of Janet Lilo
Janet is a photographer, video artist and sculptor. Her involvement with research into how people communicate with social media and the relationship that this has with net-based performance is ground breaking. I intend to introduce three short video segments of Janet’s video art that address the interface between performance and public autobiography as it is occurring throughout Australasia. Her time-based media work is going to be regarded in the future as both influential and significant.
8:50–9:05am
Kjellgren, Eric, Evelyn A. J. Hall and John A. Friede Associate Curator for Oceanic Art, AAOA, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, United States
Ngarrgoorroon Man: The Life and Art of Hector Jandany (ca. 1927 – 2006)
In his roughly eighty years, Hector Jandany (ca. 1927–2006), one of the founding artists of the East Kimberley school of contemporary Australian Aboriginal painting, witnessed many of the most significant tragedies and milestones for Aboriginal peoples in this remote region of Western Australia. From bringing food and water to groups of chained Aboriginal prisoners being taken from their lands as a young boy, to working as a stockman (cowhand) on the region’s vast cattle stations in his youth, to becoming both a local and national advocate for Aboriginal rights and bilingual education and an internationally recognized artist in his later years, Jandany’s life embodied much of the Aboriginal experience in the twentieth and early twenty first century. Although he sometimes traveled far from it, his life and art always remained intimately tied to his country (homeland) of Ngarrgoorroon, which was the primary subject of his paintings. Based on the author’s interviews with Jandany over a period of ten years, the paper examines the life and work of this remarkable figure within contemporary Aboriginal art.
9:10–9:25am
Stevenson, Karen
Abstraction in the Art of Filipe Tohi
Within the annals of western art history; abstraction was an idea that began, perhaps, with the impressionists. The late 19th century witnessed technological innovation that allowed artists to look at their practice in different ways, enabling that expression to move into what the 20th century witnessed as abstract art. With modernity and modernism these notions continued to grow and attain wide acceptance in the west.
Pacific artists have created abstract works for millennia. Western scholars, at first, suggested that these abstractions were merely 'primitive' renderings and an inability to depict human forms in a realistic manner. The innate ability of Pacific peoples to think 'abstractly' and to have art forms that reinforced this ability was beyond the imagination of the west.
Filipe Tohi's artistic practice is based on lalava; an art form of lashing – of patterns that became mnemonic devices to past cultural knowledge. These 'abstract' works both reinforce the traditional abilities/realities of Pacific peoples, but they also demonstrate an alliance with western modernism that is uncanny. This paper will illuminate these relationships in the abstract art of Filipe Tohi. In particular it will focus on a work completed in 2009, Untitled. Within the western context this work would fit perfectly into the 60s modern and perhaps even op art styles. However, this paper will demonstrate how this seemingly modern/abstract piece is another (of many) manifestations of the tradition of lalava.
9:30–9:45am
Toure, Jean-Claude, Contemporary ni-Vanuatu artist based in Port Vila, Vanuatu (CANCELED)
Practice as contemporary ni-Vanuatu artist based in Port Vila
This presentation will focus upon my practice as a contemporary ni-Vanuatu artist based in Port Vila. The term kastom (from the fracas lingua Bislama) denotes a ritual system of living that permeates every aspect of ni-Vanuatu culture. Much of the art produced in Vanuatu is steeped in the traditions of kastom – conventional weavings and carvings visually depict legends and narratives particular to areas of the archipelago; while intangible cultural heritage, such as song, dance and storytelling are, by their very nature, ephemeral means of cultural expression. From chiefly systems of governance to the restriction of knowledge based on established modes of ownership, the notion of kastom is reflected in the themes of my work. My abstract canvases appropriate indigenous imagery to comment upon the binary relationship that exists between Western constructs of modernity and customs particular to Melanesian society. Throughout my oeuvre I seek to revitalize culturally established iconography, thereby encouraging younger generations of ni-Vanuatu to reflect upon the challenges presented by urbanization. It is within this ideological framework that my paintings explore the evolving sociopolitical position of Vanuatu.
9:50–10:05am
Tuilalo, Pétélo, Head of the visual arts and exhibitions department, Agency of the Development of the Kanak Culture, Tjibaou cultural centre, New Caledonia
Collection / Robes Mission: un art de la Rue?
Du 15 au 22 août 2010, l’Agence de Développement de la Culture Kanak – centre culturel Tjibaou présentera une exposition d’art contemporain sur la robe mission. Neuf artistes plasticiens, lors d’une résidence qui s’est tenue aux mois d’août et septembre 2009, proposeront leurs points de vue sur un objet vestimentaire qui fait partie intégrante de la culture kanak contemporaine.
Le projet « Collection / Robes mission : un art de la rue ? » propose d'utiliser la robe mission comme le support d'un message singulier qu'il appartiendra à chaque artiste, ayant participé à l'atelier, de formuler. Il met les robes en œuvre sur le principe de la collection, en jouant sur les sens de ce mot, qui recouvre à la fois la notion de collection de mode et celle de la collection d'œuvres dans un musée.
Bien plus qu'un simple vêtement, la robe mission est un objet/signe identitaire que chaque artiste peut emprunter ou se l'approprier.
Pour mener à bien ce projet, l’artiste et commissaire d’exposition Thierry Fontaine a proposé un workshop d'une durée suffisante pour que les œuvres soient particulièrement soignées et abouties. Il a eu lieu en deux temps.
L'ensemble de la production est destiné à être photographié dans un contexte choisi, pertinent, en cohérence avec la manière de travailler de l’artiste Thierry Fontaine, dans le cadre d'un partage de son expérience de plasticien avec celle des participants. Un véritable échange entre les artistes.
GROUP 2
Session Chair: Pamela Zeplin (reserve chair Dan Taulapapa McMullin)
10:30–10:45am
Fraser, Jenny, Contemporary, multimedia artist; Independent curator
The Other APT
This paper will explore the issues inherent in staging 'the other APT' an alternative or fringe exhibition to the blockbuster and what that means for Australias' Native peoples, the role of the artist in the Asia Pacific Region. Other issues include the migration of our neighbours and question the importance of Place, Legend, Identity, Politics and Mutual Respect in the interest and open Art Dialogue over cultural gate-keeping.
The exhibition features exceptional works from a range of cultural backgrounds including Aboriginal, Torres Strait Islander, Melanesian, Maori, Pacific Islander & Asian Artists based in Australia, commenting on the complexity of the here and now and providing refreshing alternative perspectives.
10:50–11:05am
Vaka’uta, Lingikoni, Fiji-based artist MA student in Pacific Studies, Oceania Centre for Art, Culture & Pacific Studies, Suva Fiji
The Contemporary Pacific Artist in the 21st Century – Issues and Challenges of Island Based Artists: Lingikoni Vaka'uta
Contemporary Pacific art is new to the region in that the professionalization of the production of art for arts sake is still not widely recognized or valued. Neither is there clear outlets for the sale or marketing of locally produced artworks. This paper examines the challenges faced by Pacific islander artists who are based and work from their island communities. A number of professional needs are discussed including institutional support and as well as infrastructure such as gallery outlets. Other issues raised are the lack of Government support, funding and the need for professional development and training. The paper highlights from the perspective of a practicing artist and researcher that the greatest challenge for the Pacific island artist is the constant combat with the overall perception of art and the attitude towards artists as professionals. This paper distinguishes between artists of Pacific descent who are based outside of the region, and the island based artist who has limited access to resources and professional support.
11:10–11:25am
Zeplin, Pamela, Senior Lecturer in Art and Design History and Theory, University of South Australia; writer, educator, and artist, Adelaide, Australia
The Pacific in the ‘Big Island’: Oceanic Waves in Australia
Contemporary art from Oceania has seen a minor surge of international interest over the past few years, with much of the impetus originating from institutions and independent curators in Aotearoa New Zealand presenting diverse and vibrant cultures of ‘Pasifika’. Their Australian institutional counterparts have recently embraced contemporary art from the Asian end of the Asia-Pacific but are much slower in acknowledging the contribution of Pacific and Islander artists to the ‘Big Island’s’ visual culture. Consequently, Oceanic art in Australia tends to be mediated through the curatorial expertise of its smaller Tasman neighbour. Despite Australia’s proximity to and experience of Pacific history, this form of cultural agency tends to foreground artists (problematically) identified as ‘Polynesian’ rather than those from neighbouring ‘Melanesia’ and ‘Micronesia’.
This paper explores recent Australian events featuring Pacific artists which include ‘Polynesian’ Aotearoa New Zealand but expand definitions of Oceania beyond these communities. Although these exciting new developments in the ‘Big Island’ generally originate in regional communities rather than metropolitan centres, increasingly, a small ripple of interest from mainstream museums is becoming visible along the eastern horizon. My research focuses on issues arising from such developments and proposes questions such as: Why is it taking so long for Australian art institutions to notice this contemporary visual culture within its own geographical borders? What does Australian Pacific art mean? Do Indigenous Australian and Pacific Islander cultures always occupy separate spheres? How might work by contemporary Pacific artists maintain integrity and social relevance if co-opted into the unpredictable swells of the global mainstream?
11:30–11:45am
Taulapapa McMullin, Dan, Independent Curator and Artist, Laguna Niguel, California, United States
The Myth of the Contemporary and the Myth of the Traditional
Contemporary Pacific Islander art and contemporary art in general has taken two main streams or directions: Art that comments on artistic practice, and therefore society, which is ostensibly critical in its intentions and results, where the artist is the ground of its being and the artwork reflects this relationship; and art that recreates artistic practice, which is performative and whose material results are the ground of its being. The first may be called critical art (for the purpose of this abstract only), and is more often in the practice of artists who are considered truly contemporary in their work, and the other may be called performative art (for the purpose of this abstract only), and is more often in the practice of artists who are considered truly traditional in their work. In this essay, based on a seminar I'm teaching this Spring at University of California Irvine, I seek to break down the division between the contemporary and the traditional. To find not only elements of each in the other, but to decolonize the racialized boundaries of art museums and other institutions, which over-determine the place of Pacific Islander art and artists, as well as our communities in a variety of social contexts.
GROUP 3
Session Chair: Christina Hellmich
2:10–2:25pm
Rosi, Pamela, Visiting Associate Professor of Anthropology, Bridgewater State College, Massachusetts, United States
Innovations in PNG Bilum-Making: The Fiber Art of Cathy Kata
In Papua New Guinea (PNG) looping natural fibers to create textiles or bags known as bilums is an ancient technology practiced mostly by women in contexts of village production. In the early 1960's, influenced by colonialism, urbanization, and the availability of imported yarns in town markets, PNG women began to make bilums in diverse sizes, shapes and patterns reflecting tribal styles. In the 1990's new designs inspired by personal sources of creativity also became popular. Today, bilums are found in most regions of mainland PNG and are used by men, women, and children to carry possessions or to exchange and gift. Recently, bilum looping has expanded to fabricate clothing. Termed bilumwear, these garments are regarded as distinctive indigenous fashions, enabling Papua New Guineans to express pride in personal, ethnic, and/or national identity.
In this paper, I focus on the bilum-making skills of Cathy Kata, whose innovative designs have won her national recognition and invitations to promote her work in the international art market. In 2009, she was one of five PNG artists selected for Hailans to Ailans, an art project with exhibitions mounted at the Rebecca Hossack Art Gallery in London, UK and at Alcheringa Gallery, Victoria, BC. As co-curator, I discuss the range and reception of Kata's work, including presentation in London of her bilumwear as "living sculpture" in a performance titled "Kilum Bilum", directed by Pacific performance artist, writer, and curator Rosanna Raymond.
2:30–2:45pm
Cochrane, Susan, Independent curator/author, Guest Curator Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts & Tjibaou Cultural Centre
Bilum Morphs from Street Market to Haute Couture
The everyday bilum (netbag) is worn by millions of people in Papua New Guinea, and the sight of women weaving and selling bilum at street markets is so familiar that it draws only cursory attention. Look again – now fashion models and beauty contestants are parading haute couture garments designed and made by PNG women on the world stage. One hub of this creative revolution is Goroka, home base of designer-entrepreneurs Cathy Kata and Florence Jaukae. In 2009 Cathy Kata BilumWear featured in the Hailans to Ailans exhibition, with showings at Rebecca Hossack Gallery in London, Alcheringa Gallery in Victoria, Canada and the de Young Museum, San Francisco, establishing bilum’s high art credentials. As well as her fashion design talents, Florence Jaukae has attracted the attention and support of the sports, trade and tourism sectors to the potential of bilum design. She designed the PNG uniforms for the 2006 Commonwealth Games and initiated the 2009 Goroka Bilum Festival, aligned with the Goroka Show. Blogs, YouTube and press reported the extent of poems, legends and histories of bilum, the extraordinary diversity of bilum bags and the great attraction of the fashion design contest. Bilas (self-adornment) is the quintessential PNG art form; garments and accessories woven with bilum stitch are part of the fine raiment of dance groups. The Hiri Moale festival showcases the traditional bilas of coastal Papuans; the latest trends of bilum style are shown off by the contestants for Miss Hiri Hanemano. Confident PNG women are developing their own style and wearing it with pride in their culture.
2:50–3:05pm
Rebecca Hossack, Director, Rebecca Hossack Gallery, London, United Kingdom
Elaine Monds, Director, Alcheringa Gallery, Victoria, Canada
Further Understanding of Contemporary Pacific Art Through Institutional Collaboration and Cross Cultural Exchange
The work of art galleries in educating the Western public about the meanings and aesthetics of Pacific art has received considerably less scholarly recognition than the role of museums. Moreover, it is often overlooked that museums and galleries collaborate in creating public perceptions about Pacific art in the international art world. This merits further evaluation. This co-authored paper focuses on how Alcheringa Gallery and Rebecca Hossack Art Gallery have pioneered bringing contemporary indigenous Pacific art to the attention of art lovers on both sides of the Atlantic. Each gallery has for over twenty years worked to raise the appreciation and value of contemporary Pacific art in a very competitive art market, one in which non-Western expressions have to overcome stereotypes of "the primitive" and ethnocentric judgments about authenticity. Last year, the galleries collaborated on Hailans to Ailans (hailanstoailans.com), an international set of exhibitions and events featuring five leading Papua New Guinean artists. The project offered opportunities for the artists to liaise with museums as well as Coast Salish artists and communities of the Canadian Northwest Coast. Our discussion will include an evaluation of the project in representing indigenous artists of the Pacific Rim and the value of cross cultural exchange.
3:10–3:25pm
Hellmich, Christina, Curator, Jolika Collection of New Guinea Art and Curator, Oceanic Art, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, de Young Museum, California, United States
Critical Accalaim: Measuring the Impact and Success of Contemporary New Guinea Art in the U.S.A.
The Jolika Fellowship program at the de Young Museum enables contemporary artists from Papua New Guinea to travel to San Francisco, California, and other cities in the United States, to share their work with the public in art museums and university settings. These non-commercial artist residencies, public events, and educational programs have been met with great interest. Reflecting on the first five years of the fellowship program, this paper looks critically at the impact and success of these PNG artists in the U.S. from both the artists’ and museum’s perspective. The limited opportunities to show contemporary New Guinea art in U.S. art museum exhibitions and permanent gallery installations will be discussed.
While several Oceanic collections in U.S. art museums include works by one or two prominent PNG artists active in the 1970s and 1980s, and temporary exhibitions such as Altogether: Contemporary Papua New Guinea Art at the East-West Center Gallery in Honolulu in 2008 have been mounted, U.S. art museums currently do not have acquisition programs focusing on the work of contemporary artists from New Guinea. The significance of U.S. art museums and university programs to the success of contemporary New Guinea art will be compared to recent initiatives by international commercial galleries and public institutions.
3:30–3:45pm
Kohlhase, Marilyn, Director, Okaioceanikart Gallery, Mt. Eden, Auckland, New Zealand
Okaioceanikart: The World's Only Pan Pacific Gallery
Okaioceanikart is the world’s only pan Pacific art gallery. It is dedicated to promoting, developing and supporting Pacific arts, artists and cultures. Artists of the Pacific from PNG, New Caledonia, Vanuatu, Solomon Islands, Fiji, New Zealand born Polynesian and Maori and from the Pacific Diaspora based in the US and Australia are represented. Based in Auckland on the street that was the heart beat of the migrant Polynesian people during the notorious Dawn Raids of the seventies, okai gallery is part of a five star hotel complex.
In its 3 years, the gallery has held the first Melanesian exhibition in New Zealand Taim Bilong Melanesia and Spirit of the People: New Melanesian Art, the RIPTIDE Contemporary Pacific Art exhibition and numerous artist and community events.
okaioceanikart – a niu space
connecting with the spirituality of Pacific peoples
honouring the spirit of the artist
communities finding their voice and speaking their truths
communities finding the creative force in their own lives
selling the work of Pacific artists
artistic voices creating meaning
okaioceanikart community -
artists are enabled to pursue life as an artist
we gather and create gatherings
mentoring and nurturing are integral to each day
patrons and visitors find connections to the spirit of art
the soul/ spirit of people is honoured.
This session will discuss the role okaioceanikart plays locally, nationally and internationally – and in cyberspace on www.okaioceanikart.com in relation to how the works of its diverse artists from the region and urban centres are influencing changing changing perceptions and understandings of Pacific culture.
GROUP 4
Session Chair: Fono McCarthy (reserve chair Rosanna Raymond)
4:00–4:15pm
McCarthy, Fonofale (Fono), Multi media Artist, Independent Curator, and Gallery Director, Auckland, New Zealand
“The Development of Le Gafa: An Ongoing Dialogue Between the Contemporary and the Customary”
“The Development of Le Gafa” explores the Samoan concept of “Le Gafa” [ancestry, genealogy] and metaphor in Pacific contemporary and traditional arts. I will discuss how some Samoan art are interpretations of communal discourses from within an aiga (family) or village. I will also examine how these artworks reference a hierarchical cultural structure. My artistic and curatorial approach is to examine the relational spaces between the contemporary and the customary, and present them to the public by engaging in a critical reflection (through art making and my curatorial practices) on various conversations between the visual culture of Fa’a Samoa (the Samoan way), architecture of the Fale Samoa (Samoan house) and other indigenous traditions. These practices or performances in the in-between are visually situated and are translated by engaging with contemporary sculptural and structural forms or objects, as an individual and collectively.
4:20–4:35pm
Raymond, Rosanna, Artist, Curator
ConVAsations: Sharing Hinemihi
Since moving to the UK I have been involved in many Polynesian based projects big and small, in various guises, as a curator, researcher, performer, artist, lecturer, workshop leader and member of the large and thriving UK-based Polynesian community groups Ngati Ranana and Beats of Polynesia. This presentation will concentrate some of the issues and insights that I have gained from working within this multitudinal position.
In particular I will focus on the Hinemihi Conservation and Heritage project that has crossed cultures, institutions, academic disciplines and has changed and adapted to mirror the many different needs of all who are part of her care and maintenance. A collaborative process has developed to find a shared vision for her, as a historic property, as a vital part of the Maori and Pacific community diary in the UK and as an ancestral house of the Ngati Hinemihi peoples in NZ.
Hinemihi was constructed as a meeting house in Te Wairoa, Aotearoa NZ in 1881; she was transported to her current location at Clandon Park, Surrey, UK in 1892 by Lord Onslow and is now ‘owned’ by the National Trust UK. I feel this project is a good example of collaboration between communities and institutions and has also shown me, that while repatriation does not have to be all about the physical, it is very important to maintain the relationships between peoples and things, keeping the legacy of these ties activated, having relevance for the now and not just the historical past.
4:40–4:55pm
Kolokesa Uafā Māhina-Tuai, Freelance Curator, Wellington, New Zealand
Sēmisi Fetokai Potauaine, MA Archictecture candidate at the University of Auckland and multimedia artist, New Zealand
Hūfanga Dr ‘Okusitino Māhina, Founder-Director of the Vava’u Academy for Critical Inquiry and Applied Research and Professor of Tongan Studies
‘Aatí mo e Koloa Tukufakaholó: A Tā-Vā (Time-Space) Theory of Art and Cultural Heritage
Our joint paper will investigate the conflicting formal, substantial and functional relationships between ‘aatí (art) and koloa tukufakaholó (cultural heritage). Art is a disciplinary practice and also a form of social activity deeply embedded in culture, linking the form, content and function of things, across nature, mind and society. The investigation of the problematic relationships between art and culture will be informed by the general tā-vā theory of reality, based on the Tongan classical sense of time and space. As a case in point, we as members of the production team for the newly established Kula-‘Uli Publishing (NZ) will present the first three books (2009) in our new series on children’s stories based on Tongan myths and legends. As works of art, Tongan myths and legends are part of the wealth of Tonga’s intangible cultural heritage. In re-telling these myths and legends, our approach has been original, creative and innovative through the use of classical Tongan abstract modes of talanoa (story-telling), tākupesi (image-producing) and tāfakalanu (image-colouring), in connection with the artistic devices heliaki (intersecting human meanings), kupesi (intersecting images) and kula-‘uli (intersecting colours). Our book series utilises Tonga’s rich cultural heritage by means of local knowledge and skills, as well as untapped local expertise, for consumption on both local and global levels. Also, the series plays a key role in safeguarding Tonga’s tangible and intangible cultural heritage.
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SESSION 5: REPRESENTING PACIFIC ART AND CULTURES
GROUP 1
Session Chairs: Jenny Newell and Tobias Sperlich
8:50–9:05am
Howarth, Crispin, Curator, Pacific Arts, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, Australia
Out of Focus – the History of the NGA Pacific Art Collection
The National Gallery of Australia (NGA) has a collection of over two thousand works from the Pacific art, the majority of which have never been on public view. In January 2007 moves were taken to assess and recognise the significance of this collection. This paper will address the history of the collection of which the bulk was formed within five years from 1968 to 1973, a period where the NGA utilized Australians working in the Territory of Papua and New Guinea as field collectors and also undertook three field collecting expeditions to build its collection. During the 1970s directions for Pacific art changed to the purchase of single works identified as 'masterpieces', such as the Ambum stone, and acquisitions were selected through consultation with Douglas Newton.
The NGA Pacific Arts comprise of several unique collections which remain little known to researchers and others in the field of Pacific Arts, this paper will outline the major sections of the collection, the decline of recognition of Pacific art within Australia during the 1980s and the past three years of activity at the NGA with a newly formed Pacific Arts department.
9:10–9:25am
Moloney, Kylie,Archivist, Pacific Manuscripts Bureau, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia
Archives in the Pacific Art Context
The Pacific Manuscripts Bureau has copied archives, manuscripts and rare printed material in the Pacific for more than forty years; one of the longest joint copying project in the world. Each year, staff travel to islands in the Pacific to microfilm archival documents including missionary and church records, letters and diaries, whaling, trading and shipping records and unpublished research papers.
This paper will highlight significant archival collections relating to Pacific Art in the Pacific Islands. It will draw on the history, collection and expert knowledge of the Bureau, along with case studies from various archives throughout the Pacific.
The paper will present an overview of the history of Pacific archives, including how the archives and their administrators have sought to represent the Pacific. It will discuss how archives have been used to assist contemporary artists from the Pacific as they create new art forms, as well as museum curators and researchers in furthering their understanding of Pacific Art. The author will discuss current Pacific archive collection policies, including what Pacific Islanders see as important to collect; and raise issues of accessibility, usage and the future of these important repositories as a resource for Pacific Art.
9:30–9:45am
Newell, Jenny, National Museum of Australia, Canberra, Australia
Looking for Tahiti: Museum Collections, Representations and Silences
What factors have shaped representations of the Pacific in museums around the world? When the first, extraordinary artifacts brought back from the Pacific were displayed in the British Museum’s South Seas room in the 1770s, the only explanations supplied for the mystifying objects were the names of their illustrious British donors. Cultural institutions have continued to provide displays that convey clear judgments about the value of Pacific peoples and their productions. The display and the absence of Pacific cultures in museum cases has carried political implications for the region.
Despite phases of considerable public interest, museums in the West have often ignored their Pacific collections, trading them away for more highly-valued artifacts, leaving them unrecorded, badly stored and rarely seen. Pacific Islanders have occasionally been involved in representing themselves in museums and colonial exhibitions, but until recently it has been difficult for Islanders to locate or gain access to the artifacts of their ancestors.
I have been tracing these dynamics through the example of Tahiti, an island with an exceptionally long and well-documented engagement with the West. Surveying the collections and exhibitions of Tahitian artifacts worldwide, I have located over 11,000 items in nearly 100 institutions, objects ranging from archaeological finds to contemporary arts. This paper uses these findings to explore the conceptual frameworks behind representations of Tahiti and the broader Pacific. Islanders and cultural institutions are now reinvigorating these cultural treasures in ways that relate them once again to living communities.
GROUP 2
Session Chair: Barry Craig (reserve chair Carol Mayer)
10:10–10:25am
Craig, Barry, Senior researcher, Foreign Ethnology, South Australian Museum, Adelaide, Australia
The Upper Sepik-Central New Guinea Project – a Scientific Approach to Ethnographic Collections
Washburn and Crowe, in their 1988 book Symmetries of Culture, wrote the following (p.41): "If the aim of history, art history, archaeology and anthropology is to describe and study the products of human behavior which consistently reoccur and thus form non-random patterns, and if we treat these patterns as manifestations of ideas held in common by makers and users of the artifacts, then we must, first of all, give our attention to classificatory aspects of those phenomena which relate to those non-random ideas and patterns of behavior. . . The problem of why people do things similarly [or differently] is pervasive, profound, and not trivial. It deserves our best systematic efforts."
The Upper Sepik-Central New Guinea Project (see www.uscngpp.com) sought to photograph and gather data on as many objects as possible that had been collected from a specific geographical area and were held in museums and private collections worldwide. The most important information was the place of collection. Of 12,000 objects recorded, around 10,000 have this information. This makes it possible to define classes of objects, and attributes of classes of objects, and analyse their distributions over space and to compare those distributions to other spatial attributes such as language, environment, subsistence systems and demographics. It is intended that the results of such analyses will contribute to the development of a theory of the evolution of material culture. This is a proper and timely use of museum collections and provides the opportunity to give indigenous people access to their material cultural heritage.
10:30–10:45am
Mayer, Carol E., Head, Curatorial Department, Curator, Oceania and Africa, and Associate to the Department of Anthropology, University of British Columbia Museum of Anthropology, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
“We Gather to Reconcile – No Longer Captives of the Past”*
This paper will examine the connections between a donation of five early 19th century objects from the Pacific, an MOU between a Canadian museum and the Pacific Islands Museums Association (PIMA), a 21st century reconciliation ceremony on Erromango, a permanent exhibition and the creation of a set of complex and ongoing relationships and obligations. The objects, a Fijian club, a New Caledonian club, a Polynesian hook, an Austral Islands’ whisk and a Maori flute, were once owned by the Reverend John Williams who was killed on Erromango in 1839. They had been passed down the Canadian branch of his family and were given to the UBC Museum of Anthropology (MOA) with the understanding they might be subject to future repatriation requests. Initially they were viewed as remarkable “objects of wonder,” valued both for their historic significance and the story of their journey from the Pacific to Canada. It was however the relevance of their physical existence in the present that initiated discussions which culminated in a reconciliation ceremony, held on November 20th 2010, between the people of Dillon’s Bay, Erromango, and descendents of the family of the Reverend John Williams. This paper will conclude with an examination of how this historic event has resulted in an assemblage of tangible objects and intangible obligations that have created new opportunities and challenges for MOA, the people of Erromango and the family of John Williams.
*From a poem written by David Williams, great great grandson of the reverend John Williams.
10:50–11:05am
Peita, Dion, Collections Coordinator, Cultural Collections & Community Engagement Unit, Cultural Heritage & Science Initiatives Branch, Australian Museum, Sydney, Australia
Community Engagement & Access from a Kaitiakitanga Perspective: What is Kaitiakitanga?
Although essentially a Maori concept, Kaitiakitanga is a principle derived from a holistic worldview that many indigenous peoples share. Its application in a Museum context, has demonstrated the capacity to both impact individuals and mobilize entire peoples. It holds exciting possibilities.
Over time with the support of Pacific diaspora communities in NSW and the Australian Museum, fostering a new context and process will be important to integrate Pacific world views and values. In this paper I will discuss Kaitiakitanga, explore how the Cultural Collections team promote community engagement and access to the collections. And discuss initiatives currently being explored with Juvenile Justice, and Pacific Artist communities in NSW to reveal the possibilities through the eyes of a kaitiaki.
11:10–11:25am
Wagelie, Jennifer, Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Anthropology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., United States
Where Have all the Manikins Gone?
This paper looks at the use of manikins in displays of Pacific Island art and culture in American museums. If focuses on two examples that went on display in the 1960s: a multi-generational Maori family at the Field Museum in Chicago and a Maori “life group” that recreated a tattooing scene at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History. As both examples are no longer extant and the continued use of manikins scant, this paper raises the question – is there room anymore for manikins in 21st century displays?
GROUP 3
Session Chair: Carol Ivory (reserve chair Anne Allen)
1:30–1:45pm
Wallace, Patricia Te Arapo, Research Associate, Macmillan Brown Centre for Pacific Studies, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand
The Riddle of the Raranga Rain-Capes (Working Title: A Simple Raranga Rain-Cape Making a Change in Direction)
For Maori weavers in Aotearoa today, access to Maori woven art held in international collections remains highly important. Traditional weaving suffered significantly in consequence of an earlier form of global community – colonialism; many indigenous technologies and terminologies were lost. Access to examples of earlier practice enables re-creation, leads to retrieval and revitalization of skills, to new comprehension of ancestral thinking, and to a stronger sense of identity.
However, when viewed within an holistic context, objects of art can sometimes reveal highly complex and quite unexpected concepts. To date, just four examples of an apparently simple plaited variety of 19th century Maori rain-cape have been found – dispersed around the world. From one of these, a 21st century example has been created; moreover, it has been suggested that this type may have its foundation in the Cook Islands. But when these early garments are closely compared – they reveal differences that may be more significant than previously realised.
This paper discusses current research, identifies levels of recovery progress, and hints at potential understanding of an apparently unrelated artefact that may yet be achieved. Presenting this before an international Pacific forum maximises opportunities of increasing existing knowledge and suggests some ways in which restoring ancestral wisdom provides the greatest empowerment towards true interpretation of Pacific art.
1:50–2:05pm
Edmunds, Bethany Matai, MA Candidate, New York University, New York, United States
He Kakahu Maori: Maori Cloaks in American Museums: Conservation, Storage and Display
Upon completion of learning the traditional weaving process of my ancestors, my teacher told me that I would be the one to take this art form to the world. And now ten years later I find myself in New York writing this thesis, an opportunity to make cross-institutional comparisons between four East coast American museums and the formulation of their Pacific collections, with specific focus on Maori cloaks from Aotearoa New Zealand. By conducting in-depth object based research in the museum collections the cloaks themselves have provided the means to illustrate a visual chronology of the materials, techniques and stylistic developments of Maori cloak weaving; and through anecdotal evidence illustrate the role and prestige of cloaks as the costume of Maori culture. Through staff interviews issues of material vs. cultural preservation, access, repatriation, representation and consultation with indigenous communities are questioned. Comparisons are drawn between the variable methods these organizations employ to conserve, store and exhibit Maori material culture, outside a New Zealand context. Utilizing my knowledge and experience to unlock hidden techniques, offer cultural advice where appropriate, and learn new methods for the protection of these ancient textiles, which can then be applied to other Maori objects and indigenous textiles. Viewing the cloaks themselves as physical objects that encapsulate traditional knowledge, and transcend time, providing technical evidence for future generations of weavers.
2:10–2:25pm
Ivory, Carol S., Professor, Department of Fine Arts, Washington State University, Pullman, Washington, United States
Vaekehu, Illustrating the Life and Times of a Nineteenth Century Marquesan 'Queen'
There is perhaps no other Marquesan whose life more clearly mirrors the changes that occurred in the Marquesas Islands in the nineteenth century than Vaekehu. Her story contains adventure and irony, violence and betrayal, dignity and courage. In its broad sweep and intimate detail, it brings to life and makes personal, abstract notions of power and status, gender relations, culture contact and historical change.
Born on Nukuhiva around 1823, she was a high-ranking woman in a line of powerful and wealthy Marquesan women. She grew up in a period when the 'old ways' were still vital and the structure of 'traditional' Marquesan life intact. She married Temoana, the highest-ranking chief in Taiohae. Their high status led the French to dub them ‘king’ and ‘queen’ of Nuku Hiva. By the time of her death in June 1901, at the age of 78, fewer than 4000 Marquesans remained of the estimated 100,000 a century earlier and the culture had changed dramatically due to missionization and colonization.
The life and times of Vaekehu and her family are extraordinarily well documented through extensive written reports (Porter, Melville, Radiguet, Loti, Chaulet, R.L. Stevenson, and others), and a large body of drawings and photographs made over most of the century. The paper will use this rich written and visual record to demonstrate how archival material can be used to bring her story – and that of 19th century Nuku Hiva – to life and is part of a planned book on the subject.
2:30–2:45pm
Allen, Anne E. Guernsey, Indiana University, Southeast, New Albany, Indiana, United States
Who Speaks for Samoa? Some Reflections by a Palagi Teacher of Pacific Art and Culture in the American Midwest
James Clifford in The Predicament of Culture asks “Who has the authority to speak for a group’s identity or authenticity?” He is concerned with what happens to objects and their contextual “practices once they are re-located in Western museums, exchange systems, disciplinary archives, and discursive traditions.” In doing so he broaches questions concerning ethnographic authority in written texts and museum collections. However, Clifford does not consider at least one particular area of Western discourse: the college classroom. It is in courses on art or anthropology where many students outside the Pacific have their only contact with this region’s cultures. In considering the work of Clifford and others, this paper reflects on questions of voice, authority and authenticity as they pertain to the presentation of Pacific art (including Samoa) at one relatively small Midwestern university. What are the practical and ethical pitfalls of a white woman teaching a relatively non-diverse set of local students about cultures to which neither belong? How, if ever, does one compensate for the limitations and inequities inherent in such a process? As Baxandall asks in the context of museum display, “What is the exhibitor, who is charged with representing a culture – and with doing so to a viewer whose posture in the field of exhibition entails not so much that he should take artifacts as individual effects of general cultures, but that he should take individual cultural facts as causes for artifacts – to do?”
Baxandall, Michael. 1990. Exhibiting Intention: Some Preconditions of the Visual Display of Culturally Purposeful Objects. In Exhibiting Cultures, edited by Ivan Karp and Steven Lavine. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington D.C., pp. 33 – 21.
Clifford, James, 1988. The Predicament of Culture. Harvard University Press, Cambridge Massachusetts
GROUP 4
Session Chair: Wonu Veys (reserve chair Tobias Sperlich)
3:00–3:15pm
Sperlich, Tobias, Department of Anthropology, University of Regina, Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada
Oceania in Germany: Between Cliché and Education
The past several years have seen the opening or re-installation of a number of permanent Pacific galleries in large ethnographic museums throughout Germany. Among those were the galleries at the Überseemuseum Bremen (2003), those at the Staatliches Museum für Völkerkunde in Munich (2005) and, most recently, those at the Museum für Völkerkunde at Leipzig (2009). In addition, the Rautenstrauch-Joest Museum in Cologne is in the process of installing its new Pacific galleries, scheduled to open in 2010.
In all cases, the curators have strived to showcase the Pacific not as a place of imagined children of nature living a carefree life, untouched by the west and frozen in time, but as part of a globalised world including political, environmental and other challenges as well as novel and exciting ways of living and expressing culture.
Yet, the prevalent image of the South Pacific in Germany remains one of a terrestrial 'Garden of Eden'. It is in this context that the curators of these exhibits had to realize their vision of presenting a realistic image of Pacific peoples and their lives. They had to maintain a balance between educating a museum audience about the realities of life in the Pacific and answering to this same audience's desire for a clichéd South Seas. This presentation will showcase some examples of how Oceania is represented in these exhibits and how these representations reflect these opposing constraints.
3:20–3:35pm
Thode-Arora, Hilke, Munich State Museum of Ethnology, Munich, Germany
Exchanging Gifts with Royals and Pleasing Paying Audiences: a Samoan High Chief’s Trip to Germany with an Ethnic Show, and the Resulting Collections in Germany
Large parts of the Samoa collections in the Munich State Museum of Ethnology, Germany, have been purchased in the 1910s from the brothers Fritz and Carl Marquardt. Fritz was a part of the German colonial administration in Apia and later ran a plantation. Carl dealt in ethnographic objects and specialized in ethnic shows, a wide-spread branch of show business around 1900, where non-European people were recruited to be put on display and act in performances of ‘typical pursuits’ for paying audiences in Europe and North America.
Between 1895 and 1914, the Marquardt brothers organized five Samoan ethnic shows which toured Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Denmark and Russia. Several German museums hold collections which either came from the shows directly, where they were used as stage props or put on display as a side exhibition, or the pieces were purchased from Carl Marquardt who regularly stocked up his artifact supply from Samoa.
In 1910/11 Tupua Tamasese Lealofi, holder of one of the highest Samoan titles, travelled to Germany with one of the Marquardt shows. Apart from the daily show routine, he met and ceremoniously exchanged gifts with the German emperor and the Bavarian crown prince; some of these presents are part of the Samoa collection in the Munich State Museum today.
The paper explores these objects’ biographies’ and different meanings of ‘Samoanness’: e.g. as ethnographic specimen from a museum and the Marquardt perspective, but as valuables establishing relationships for Tamasese, who seems to have strategically used the gift exchange to consolidate his position among other Samoan High Chiefs.
3:40–3:55pm
Veys, Fanny Wonu, Curator Oceania, Museum Volkenkunde, Leiden, Netherlands
Reinforcing Connections Between New Zealand and the Netherlands: a Waka and an Exhibition in Leiden
This paper deals with two separate, but connected projects developed at the National Museum of Ethnology in Leiden (Museum Volkenkunde), the Netherlands. The first is the construction of a waka on the museum grounds during July and August of 2010; the second is the exhibition project tentatively titled ‘Maori Mana’ which will start in October 2010 and will feature Maori historical and contemporary pieces while also paying attention to the New Zealand and Dutch relationships started with Abel Tasman’s visit, but really developed from the 1950s onwards with massive Dutch emigration.
For both projects active involvement has been sought with two New Zealand based institutions – on the one hand with Toi Maori Aotearoa and with the Auckland Museum on the other hand – with the aim of building long-lasting relations. The challenges and successes that come from working together, typify museums that try to work with peoples who do not make up the country’s indigenous peoples or minorities. The collaboration effort testifies, however, to the concern the Museum Volkenkunde has with the contemporary way in which Maori voices outside the Pacific are represented. Indeed, Maori carvers will be based at the Museum to make the waka, while the exhibition will not only feature historic and contemporary art works, but visitors will also be able to see and hear interviews taken by contemporary Maori. Moreover the fact that the projects take place in a country from which many New Zealanders originally came from means issues of the politics of colonialism are touched upon.
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DAY THREE: WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 11
SESSION 4: THE EMERGING ROLE OF MUSEUM WEBSITES AND OTHER WEB ENTITIES
GROUP 1
Session Chair: Anita Herle (reserve chair Vicky Barnecutt)
8:30–8:45am
Eklund, Peter, Director, Centre of Digital Ecosystems, School of Information Systems and Technology, The University of Wollongong, Australia
P. Goodall, The Australian Museum, Sydney, Australia
A. Lawson, The University of Wollongong, Australia
Melanie Van Olffren, The Australian Museum, Sydney, Australia
T. Wray, The University of Wollongong, Australia
The Virtual Museum of the Pacific
The Virtual Museum of the Pacific is a social media platform for a digital ecosystem, which enables a variety of user communities to engage with the Pacific Collection of the Australian Museum. The success of the system depends on facilitating the development of culturally relevant folksonomies and encouraging a conversation between online communities. In this paper we explore the relationships between stakeholders, folksonomy and taxonomy, to reveal the design strategies which inform this digital ecosystem. Our analysis defines the scope for the social tagging component of our information model and discusses how users might interact with objects (in terms of their knowledge base) and also contribute to ongoing taxonomic definitions. Given its capacity to span both collection management and community access issues, we contend that the Virtual Museum of the Pacific is a significant model for online community interaction in the contemporary museum environment. The The Virtual Museum of the Pacific is accessible at http://epoc.cs.uow.edu.au/vmp.
8:50–9:05am
Barnecutt, Vicky, Wolfson College, Oxford University, United Kingdom
Gunn, Michael, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, Australia
A Database on Art Objects from New Ireland
An electronic database of 5,900 objects was constructed in an attempt at classifying on the basis of provenance and style the art objects of New Ireland that exist in more than 130 different museums and private collections throughout the world. On some levels this database appears to have great potential, but there are many difficulties involved.
9:10–9:25am
Cadora, Marion, Graduate Student, Art and Art History, University of Hawaii, Manoa, United States
Karabuspalau Kaiku, Patrick, Graduate student, Pacific Island Studies, University of Hawaii, Manoa, United States
(Re)presenting Art, Culture, and Identity of Papua New Guinea: The New Era of Interactive Blogging
Internet technology is ushering in a generation of creative and interactive participants in the representation of Papua New Guinean culture. As accessibility to the internet technology is made possible in Papua New Guinea (PNG), the internet will become the most up-to-date and generative source of interaction with the global community. There are fundamentally beneficial effects of this phenomenon including the promotion of multiplicitous cultures of PNG and an interactive medium in contesting and exposing the homogenized representations that have hitherto been created about PNG.
This paper case studies PNG bloggers who are using the internet tools as a medium to construct and reconstruct representation of PNG, while looking at the way in which these exercises of (re)presentation practices around virtual spaces are moving into real spaces within PNG and throughout the globe. Independent Papua New Guinean bloggers are already setting the pace using the web to host protests against historical and contemporary misrepresentations of PNG and looking to ways in which contemporary and customary artistic practices are important for political and socio-economic growth. Consequently, bloggers, independent journalist, artists, and curators alike are networking and using blogs as a collaborative and social platform to disseminate contemporary PNG culture including the promotion of festivals, exhibitions, and individual artists. This paper investigates the direct and indirect consequences of blogging on the discourse of representation and politics of art. That is, in this era of the internet technology, is blogging the new virtual repatriation of cultural representation and identity projection.
9:30–9:45am
Herle, Anita, Senior Curator for Anthropology, University of Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge, United Kingdom
John Layard long Malakula 1914-1915: The potency of photographic images
This paper focuses on a recent collaborative project to return to Vanuatu over 450 photographs taken by Cambridge anthropologist John Layard in the small islands off Malakula between 1914-1915. The images provide an extraordinary record of the elaborate ritual and cultural life of Small Islanders. A close examination of the processes involved in their repatriation provides important insights into the way that historical knowledge is differentially activated in the present. It also raises questions about the photography’s role as an evidential and inter-subjective medium.
Recent work in visual anthropology has emphasised the materiality of the photographic image. Layard’s photographs have been returned in different formats within Vanuatu – as individual prints, digital images supplemented by an updated electronic catalogue, and a community focused book of photographs, John Layard long Malakula 1914-1915, freely distributed to the communities in the Small Islands from where the images originated. Received with tremendous enthusiasm, the photographs in various formats have prompted a complex range of responses. As material instantiations of ancestors and customary practices, the images have been situated within multiple narratives of colonial encounter, family status and entitlement, and national and local projects to promote Kastom Ekonomi. This paper explores the rich potency of the images and the multiple readings they afford as they move through time and space, and through virtual and tangible forms of presentation and distribution.
GROUP 2: VIRTUAL REPATRIATION
Session Chair: Amiria Salmond (reserve chair Karen Nero)
10:00–10:15am
Nero, Karen L., College of Arts, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand
Reconnecting: Accessing and Communicating Knowledge Held in Collections in Overseas Museums and Archives
How can researchers, museums and archives use new technologies to assist communications between members of home communities with heritage items held in overseas collections? Based on long-term research with Micronesian museums and collections especially in major museums in New Zealand and the British Museum, I consider ways in which partnerships and home community-led research and presentation of these materials are and might be supported as the best approach to increase both knowledge and support for the economic viability of museums and cultural centres at home and abroad. What might we learn from recent accomplishments and problems? Research questions include: Is visual repatriation a partial answer to current Pacific requests for repatriation? What are current concerns from both Pacific and overseas, and negotiations underway on access, copyrights, relevant intellectual property issues? What knowledge might the material, audio and visual materials held in overseas collections contain and evoke, and how is this best made available access and communicated? How do members of home communities and others engage with visual (including 3-dimensional) images and what issues must we consider?
10:20–10:35am
Salmond, Amiria
Hogsden, Carl
Jessop, Maia
Lythberg, Billie
* This is a joint panel presentation paired with that offered by Hera (Sarah) Ngata-Gibson and others representing the group Toi Hauiti entitled Te Ngaiotukirarotonga.
Artefacts of Encounter: Digital Taonga and ‘Virtual’ Repatriation
Artefacts of Encounter is a new 3-year project based at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge (MAA) that deploys artefacts as primary evidence of the nature of encounters between European explorers and islanders on more than fifty voyages to Polynesia between 1765-1840. To manage the wealth of evidence available on the voyages and associated collections, the project exploits new possibilities for organizing this material and generating analytic insights offered by ‘digital research environments’. KIWA, the system we are building for the project as a whole, is complemented by Te Rauata, a repository for the digital taonga [treasured possessions] of our Project Partner, the Maori tribal group Te Aitanga a Hauiti. Te Rauata will draw on and feed into KIWA but is owned and controlled by the community, and is seen as a way of reassembling their dispersed cultural heritage, scattered across the world through processes of imperial exploration and collecting.
What this reassemblage constitutes is the open topic of our presentation. Critiquing the notion of virtual repatriation, we explore the challenges inherent in the creation and management of digital taonga, in relation to early Pacific voyage collections. Taking a lead from our Project Partners who assert strong ancestral interests in these historical encounters and their artefacts, project team members will map out the challenges they face as they embark on a series of active collaborations with holding institutions, scholars, and Polynesian communities, which will shed new light on the dynamics of cross-cultural exchange and its consequences.
10:40–10:55am
Ngata-Gibson, Hera (Sarah), representing Toi Hauiti, Tairāwhiti, Aotearoa, New Zealand
* This presentation is paired with that offered by the Artefacts of Encounter project.
Te Ngaio-tū-ki-Rarotonga
...Ko Hingangaroa, ka tū tōna whare, Te Rāwheoro, e;
Ka tipu te whaihanga, e hika, ki Uawa
Ka riro te whakautu, te Ngaio-tū-ki-Rarotonga
Ka riro te manaia, ka riro te taowaru...
This statement from the lament of Rangiuia, a 19th century seer of the Te Rāwheoro house of learning of Uawa in the Tairāwhiti region of Aotearoa, underpins the philosophy of the Te Aitanga a Hauiti people from there in regards to learning. Te Ngaio-tū-ki-Rarotonga, an illustrious garment that was exchanged for knowledge of Te Rāwheoro, is focussed on the pedagogy of the whare pora, the learning house of fibre arts, and its contribution to Te Aitanga a Hauiti development. The whare pora is part of the wider family of art-knowledge forms of Tangaroa. The manaia and taowaru, that were gained in the knowledge exchange, represent the continuity and stability of life illustrated in carved forms prominent in the art of tribes of the Tairāwhiti. These forms illustrate and encourage a practice of innovation and creativity in the pursuit of beneficial knowledge and the reciprocal nature of knowledge exchange. This practice will be illustrated in the digital solutions Te Aitanga a Hauiti are exploring in their quest to build cultural knowledge platforms to underpin social and economic development options for their people, and are presented here as considerations for other communities.
11:00–11:15am
Leclerc-Caffarel, Stéphanie, Ph.D. Candidate, Sainsbury Research Unit, University of East Anglia, Norwich, United Kingdom
Exchange and Circulation Instead of Repatriation: Fiji Online Database Project
This paper introduces my online database project on early museum collections from Fiji. Initially part of my doctoral research on Fiji-West early exchange relations (1770s-1870s), this database references all the archives and objects on which I have worked, from many institutions around the world. Conceived initially as a web site, it aims to evolve through collection comparison, comments and exchange of knowledge. Once online, it will be a pertinent tool for researchers and curators, as well as an accessible interface for more casual visitors, which will hopefully include Fijians.
For many reasons that I will discuss in the paper, I do not believe that virtual repatriation is an effective strategy within museums. In the case of early Fijian objects, I would rather allude to Pacific concepts of exchange and circulation. Indeed, my current research shows that most early Fijian collections resulted from a two-way exchange process. Consequently, they can be regarded as the agents of a shared history between Fijians, Europeans and Americans. The database project aims to put them back into virtual and, to some extent, real circulation. It also intends to increase knowledge of early Fijian material culture and to promote further Fiji-West transactions.
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SESSION 3: CONTEMPORARY PACIFIC ART AND ARTISTS
GROUP 5
Session Chair: Emmanuel Kasarherou
1:15–1:30pm
Cochrane, Susan, Independent curator/author, Guest Curator Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts & Tjibaou Cultural Centre
The Contemporary Austronesian Art Project
Launched in 2006, the Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts (KMFA’s) ‘Contemporary Austronesian Art Project’, was an initiative to promote Taiwan’s Indigenous cultures, establish relationships with Pacific cultural institutions and creative dialogue between contemporary Pacific and Aboriginal Taiwanese artists. This stimulus for the migration of ideas and mobility of art resulted in a series of major exhibitions and an international cultural exchange program. A collaboration with the Tjibaou Cultural Centre (TCC) resulted in the first exhibition in this sequence, Across Oceans and Time: Art in the Contemporary Pacific (2006-7). In this landmark exhibition and with a sustained cross-cultural artist-in-residence program, Aboriginal Taiwanese artists were reunited with distant Pasifika cousins and a voyage of mutual discovery and recognition began. The second exhibition, Le Folauga: The Past Coming Forward (2008-9), resulted from an engagement of KMFA with the Tautai Contemporary Pacific Arts, and featured sixteen contemporary artists from Aotearoa New Zealand. The Great Journey: In Pursuit of the Ancestral Realm (2009-10), was the third exhibition in the sequential exploration with leading Pacific artists exhibiting alongside several of Taiwan’s premier indigenous artists. This paper reviews the journey of the curators in developing concepts, themes and content of these exhibitions, the art works evolved by Pacific artists-in-residence at KMFA, and where pathways to the future might lie.
1:35–1:50pm
Kasarherou, Emmanuel, Director, Tjibaou Cultural Centre, New Caledonia
The Contemporary Austronesian Art Project
An unexpected encounter between New Caledonia in the south and Taiwan in the north of our Pacific basin has led to a growing relationship of increasing complexity, including a major exhibition, artist-in-residence programs, symposia and a Pacific Islands Museums Association tour of museums and community cultural centers in south Taiwan.
The quest which the Tjibaou Cultural Centre's collaboration with the Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts collaborative projects centers on the questions – separated by space and time, do today's Pacific Islanders share a common heritage with other Austronesian people like Taiwanese Aboriginal tribes? Will this common heritage breathe life into forgotten words and restore strength to the ties that once connected our ancestors?
The identity issue has special resonance in Oceania because of the presence in our islands of indigenous and non-indigenous people brought together by colonial history. As members of the broader human family, people of the pacific have to redefine their cultural identity. In the past they were classified and listed by scholars and scientists as 'Micronesian', 'Polynesian' and Melanesian', but today they must themselves say who they are.
1:55–2:10pm
Kulele Ruladen, Taiwanese Aboriginal Artist
Indigenous Artist’s Perspective
2:15–2:30pm
Mei-chen, Tseng, Head of Research, Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, Taiwan
Observation and Thinking: After Art Administration Intervention in Taiwan’s Indigenous Contemporary Art
Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts has accomplished 3 exhibitions, held artist-in-residency projects with 19 artists' participation, collected 44 pieces of Taiwan indigenous art works, and established a web database based on indigenous artists in its "Austronesian Contemporary Arts Project" during 2007-2009. The initiation and progress of the project are of great meaning and have brought about substantial encouragement to the development of Taiwan contemporary indigenous arts. About 2.17% of the population in Taiwan is indigenous (502,566 : 23,086,441, Sept. 2009). As a minority, how do Taiwan indigenous artists regard the result of their own arts and the mainstream arts as they participate in "Austronesian Contemporary Arts Project" with a Chinese-based public organization? After communicating with artists from the South Pacific, how do Taiwan indigenous artists think of the future of their unique tribal culture and arts under the trend of globalization and Occidentalization?
2:35–2:50pm
Wan, Yuh-Yao, Professor and Director, Graduate Institute of Indigenous Art, National Dong Hwa University, Taiwan
Exhibiting Art: Contemporary Indigenous Art in Formosa Taiwan
This paper is about the contemporary phenomenon of indigenous art in Taiwan. Belonging to the Austronesian language system, 14 dominant ethnic groups constitute the indigenous culture in the island of Formosa Taiwan, and have shared traditions of craft making and carved ornaments for centuries. Today indigenous art is becoming increasingly an integral and distinctive part of art in this society, and attracts great interest with museum curators and researchers. Many indigenous artists have conducted a movement of exhibiting, which not only influences the art field, but also engages new value with traditions in art creation.
With themes on indigenous art, two different exhibitions in 2009 – conducted by two major museums, the Natural Science Museum and the Modern Art Museum – are discussed as examples. As a mechanism of exhibiting, the roles and impacts of museums are discussed regarding interpretation and display of indigenous art and culture. Moreover, the viewpoints and perceptions of indigenous artists toward art practices are analyzed as comparison. Through the approach of intertextuality, it is found indigenous art representation functions as a way for individuals to connect the ancestral, as well as an empowering phase of self identity. Through exploring the contemporary exhibiting field, accordingly, the dynamic structure and relations of indigenous art traditions and artists are analyzed and interpreted. Issues are further raised for concerning philosophy and phenomenon of oscillation reflected on creation of indigenous art, between cultural memory and innovations, between the art worlds of past and future.
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PIMA SESSION: PANEL ON PACIFIC MUSEUMS
Session Chair: Tarisi Vunidilo
2:55–3:10pm
*Soaladaob, Kiblas, Post-graduate student, Macmillan Brown Centre for Pacific Studies and the Belau National Museum, Palau
*NOTE: This presentation will be made by Tarisi Vunidilo
Community Representation: Museums in the Pacific
The role of Pacific museums can be addressing the gap between Pacific culture and art in worldwide museums and local people that produce this knowledge. Pacific museums can be a representation for their local communities in being the communication and link between locals to the wider network of institutions with Pacific aspects throughout the world. By doing so, education initiatives between locals, their institutions, and worldwide sectors can develop awareness to the local community what is out there in the global arena, what the perceptions are outside, and how they can contribute to strengthening the role of their local museum by addressing their visions and what they want to learn and gain. For the wider network of Pacific collections, they can be made aware of the different needs, perceptions, and roles of Pacific museums to their local community and the importance of the communities’ role in Pacific museums. Pacific museums can share its unique practice of community involvement in local institutions (e.g. schools, traditional institutions, traditional title-holders, churches, artists, etc.). A very big part of establishing of any institution in the Pacific is its community being involved in developing and shaping it.
3:15–3:30pm
Vunidilo, Tarisi, Secretary General, Pacific Islands Museums Association (PIMA)
DUAVATA: UNITY – The past, present and future of PIMA: Strengthening ties between Pacific Museums and sharing our Pacific Stories – A Pacific Perspective.
The Pacific Islands Museums Association (PIMA) has played a key role ever since its inception in 1994. The conglomeration of Pacific museums has many benefits, as well as challenges. Over the years, PIMA has become the “one stop shop” for Pacific cultures, gaining such branding through its innovative workshops and training for Pacific island museums and its staff. PIMA’s work has achieved a regional and international recognition and anticipates enhancing this in the future. This paper aims to explore how effective such museum conglomeration is to local indigenous communities, and how Pacific museums are adapting their museum programs, exhibitions and acquisition to match the cultural diversity in many Pacific multi-cultural societies today. There will be discussions of case studies of how some Pacific museums are adapting to many social changes and lessons learnt along the way.
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SESSION 2: PACIFIC ART AND SPIRITUALITY
GROUP 1
Session Chair: Michael Gunn (reserve chair Steven Hooper)
8:30–8:45am
Hooper, Steven, Director, Sainsbury Research Unit for the Arts of Africa, Oceania and the Americas, Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, University of East Anglia, Norwich, United Kingdom
Whale Ivory, Chiefs, Gods and Respect in Fiji
Anyone familiar with Fijian ritual will be aware of the fundamental and enduring importance of tabua (presentation whale teeth on a coir cord). Any public or private occasion of significance, whether a state occasion or a family wedding, will involve the formal presentation of tabua between parties who act as host and guest, or as affines who are affirming their relationship through marriage. Tabua can be used on a variety of occasions for different purposes, and have even been presented at key moments during Fiji’s political crises over the last few years.
How is this enduring importance to be explained? What are the historical circumstances in which tabua presentation has developed – over two hundred years or more – into a major and defining ritual procedure open to any Fijian (or indeed non-Fijian) who wishes to participate? Why is tabua presentation distinctive to Fiji and not other places in Western Polynesia or the Pacific more generally? What is the importance of sperm whale ivory, which appears to have been widely valued in different parts of the Pacific in the past, but which only in Fiji seems to have maintained its significance in cultural practice?
These and other questions will be addressed in this paper, where issues of embodiment of divine chiefly potency will be discussed, and how this has influenced the form and materials of artworks and exchange valuables that can now be found in museums around the world.
8:50–9:05am
'Ilaiu, Charmaine, Architectural Designer and Independent Researcher, New Zealand, Tonga, Fiji
Bure: Spiritual Romance
In pondering the evolving direction of Oceanic architecture, this paper discusses Fiji’s bure architecture. Firstly, the paper investigates the dark yet spiritual construction of early bure. As a continuum, the paper touches on a new kind of spirituality: the romance of the beach entwined with indigenous nostalgia, as experienced in many Fijian resort bure of today.
9:10–9:25am
Gunn, Michael, Senior Curator, Pacific Arts, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, Australia
The Elusive Nature of Atua (and their relationship to objects)
Atua (also known as akua, otua, etua) have been recorded from most, if not all, regions of Polynesia and became known by Western outsiders as "gods; devils; demons; spirits; ghosts; deified ancestors; superstitious belief" in contrast to the Christian mindset of "God; Satan; Holy Spirit; Holy Ghost; disciples; religious belief". Christian concepts displaced and to some extent replaced atua during the early colonial period when Christian missionaries were seen as representative of the dominant and invading political force.
A number of objects have been recorded as having an association with particular atua, these include u'u clubs in the Marquesas Islands, ti'i figures in the Society Islands, "staff gods" in Mangaia, Mitiaro, and Rarotonga; "fishermen's gods" in Rarotonga; "god-sticks" in Aotearoa New Zealand; and akua ka'ai in Hawai'i. This paper attempts to be objective in this very subjective field and examines the range of documented association between atua and objects in Polynesia.
9:30–9:45am
Durrant, Jacqui, Art Monthly Australia, La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia
Rarotongan Staff Gods
In museum collections around the world (most notably in the British Museum), traditional Rarotongan 'ritual art' is widely represented by 'staff gods'. These carved wooden totems – featuring a succession of geometrically abstracted human figures at one end, thickly wrapped in tapa through their middle, terminating with a lesser number of figures and a phallus at the other – stand as being among the greatest achievements in traditional Polynesian art. However, despite their existence as a distinctive class of Pacific objects, they remain poorly understood.
This paper will take a step towards recovering the cultural context of staff gods at the time of the arrival on Rarotonga of the London Missionary Society in 1823. It will progressively describe and interpret their original physical form while discussing related etymologies, before going on to explore their relationship to a range of atua spanning Rarotonga's tutelary pre-Christian god Tangaroa to deified ancestors. Such deities will be related to particular tribal genealogies located within certain vaka and tapere (districts and sub-districts), each of which possessed several marae serving as the loci of multiplicitous ritual activity. These understandings will draw us to speculate on the nature of pre-Christian Rarotongan atua.
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SESSION 6: PRESENTING OBJECT RESEARCH
GROUP 1
Session Chair: Harry Beran
10:00–10:15am
Tamata, Apolonia, Fijians Trust Fund Board, Suva Fiji Islands
The Breastplate of Chiefs
Chiefly authority on earth may be the closest form of power to that from and of the gods. In Suva, Fiji stands high and proud the Great Council of Chiefs building complex that recognises and celebrates the prominent status of chiefs. Central in the complex is the huge Valenibose which in itself resembles the typical shape and physical extensions of a Fijian itaukei building. It is an outstanding art piece that is symbolic of itaukei authority and power base.
Displayed at the centre of the Valenibose is an enlarged replica of the breastplate, or civa vonovono. It represents itaukei chiefly leadership, power and authority that protects and governs its people just as it would a chief’s heart. Traditionally, it was worn only by chiefs signifying power that is the embodiment of itaukei knowledge, the spirit of the land, and itaukei people.
This paper will describe heritage art forms in the Valenibose, including the cultural significance of the sinew and the complex built form as perceived and designed by indigenous architect Ulaiasi Baivatu. For this paper, heritage art will refer to art forms that have a cultural meaning and that represent itaukei cultural beliefs and practices. It will further explain that these art forms are ways of understanding and interpreting knowledge of the itaukei spirits as the architect tries to make it right with his chiefs and spiritual guardians. In essence, what may be appreciated as art is in fact heritage knowledge owned by its traditional practitioners.
10:20–10:35am
Beran, Harry, Independent Researcher
Prehistoric Carved Conus Shells of Eastern New Guinea
Anthony Meyer published a prehistoric shell with a beautiful bird carved on it in low relief (Oceanic Art, 1995: 154), acquired from P.J. Money in 1904. More than twenty further carved shells have been located and three have recently been carbon-dated to about 800 BP. One of them has been in the kula since it was found on a beach around 1971. Approximately half were found in Collingwood Bay, Oro Province, the other half in the Massim region. Pamela Swadling and I and a number of colleagues are writing an essay on these shells. It will show images of them and discuss their likely origin, the motifs carved on them, continuities and discontinuities of motifs when compared to contact-period artefacts, their relationship to kula shells, and their relationship to other prehistoric artefacts of the region. In the presentation at this symposium I will show images of the shells and touch on as many of the topics mentioned as possible.
10:40–10:55am
Waite, Deborah, Professor, University of Hawai'i, United States
Parrying Clubs from the Southeast Solomon Islands: Definition through Ritualization and Visual/Cultural Translation
This paper re-examines two parrying clubs (roromaraugi and qauata) prominent in the southeast Solomons and in many museum and private collections. Although it is possible to do what I have already done (e.g. Waite 1983, 1987, 2008), namely give a straight-forward account derived from recorded information about the perceived significance of these implements, here I want to stress the nature of their definition – the manner in which they have been defined not only locally through ritualization (and within that context in conjunction with other ritual staffs) but also through the refracted lenses of outsiders. Visual reproductions range from renderings by Father Verguet of the Marist Mission on Makira (1830s-40s) and prospective colonist John Webber (1851) to studio photographs of F.H. Dufty (1874-83) in which the parrying club becomes a "war club" for a "Solomon Island warrior" as conceived by Dufty. Spin-offs from these photographs perpetuate visually the role of parrying club as war club (eliminating crucial ritual role) in drawings, sculpture, lithography and painting. In Western literature, Pitt-Rivers attempted to explain the forms of parrying clubs through non-contextual evolutionary analysis of form (Natural History 14 July 1881). Other written comments provided diverse definitions. All these attempts, however far some of them stray from local usage and design contextualization, have contributed to a multi-faceted etic/emic definition of parrying clubs from the eastern Solomons; their definition stems from island sources and literary archives.
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1:15pm
AUCKLAND UNIVERSITY Art History: Maori and Pacific Graduate Panel
Convenor: Caroline Vercoe, Auckland University
Pacific Art: New Research
This panel comprises Maori, Tongan and Samoan Honours, Masters and Doctoral students from the Art History Department at Auckland University. The students will present elements of their graduate research. Their papers reflect a diverse range of issues relating to the contemporary Pacific, including the internet as an artistic medium and site for Pacific artists, contemporary Pacific participatory art practice and the changing relevance and meaning of Samoan tatau in the context of the urban Polynesian city of Auckland. Ethnographic representations of Maori and its interface with contemporary Maori art practice is also considered.
Panel Members:
Morey, Kelly Ana, Ph.D. candidate
From Samuel Carnell to my Uncle Puke's front room: The Relationship Between Maori and Photograph
Tonga, Nina, Ph.D. candidate
Ethnic Avatars: The Internet as an Artistic Medium
Vaeau, Tyla, BA (Hons) Candidate
Samoan Tatau: Changing Contexts/Migrating Meanings
Weavers, Chloe, MA candidate
Collaborative and Participatory Art Making in a Contemporary Pacific Context
1:45pm
AUCKLAND UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY Masters in Art and Design Panel
Convenor: Dale Fitchett, Strand Leader, MA&D Online Learning; Senior Lecturer, Department of Postgraduate Studies, Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand
Cultural Representations: Considering Master of Art & Design Research Projects in the Cook Islands
In February 2008, AUT University commenced delivery of their Master of Art & Design programme by distance delivery to a group of artists and designers in the Cook Islands. All the art or design research projects are underpinned by aspects that are uniquely Cook Islands in nature. MA&D students based in Rarotonga will present their postgraduate research which investigates, across diverse practices, aspects of contemporary Cook Island art and culture. The presentation will also briefly consider some implications of postgraduate teaching and learning across the cultural, geographical and digital divide between New Zealand and the Cook Islands.
Panel Members:
Barraud, Krick, MA&D Graduand
Sense of Place
Eimke, Andrea, MA&D Graduand
[Liminal Space] An Investigation of Material and Immaterial Boundaries and their Space Between
George, Kay, MA&D Graduand
Evolving Patterns of Identity: A Visual Response to Observations of Cook Islands’ Women and Their Adornment
Gragg, Joan, MA&D Graduand
Seeing the Funny Side: Focusing on Cook Islands Humour in the Experience of the Religious Pageant Nuku
Te Whiti Nia, Eruera, MA&D Graduand
Are Korero – A Sculptural Project for Are Korero within Makeanui’s Paepae Ariki, Taputapuatea, Rarotonga
Reynolds, Loretta, MA&D Graduand
Through the Eyes of Tangaroa: A Voyage in Visual Form
2:30pm
Culture and Education – the Council of Pacific Arts Strategy 2010-2015
In March 2008, at its 21st meeting, the Council of Pacific Arts and Culture decided to form a working group on Culture and Education, with the objective of enhancing cultural content, methodologies and teaching at all levels of education, and promoting the arts and culture sector. The group, chaired by the representative for Tonga, Dr Uili Fukofuka, developed a Culture and Education Strategy 2010-2015 in partnership with regional partners, which was endorsed by both the Council of Pacific Arts and Culture and the Heads of Education Systems earlier this year. The Strategy provides a roadmap for the national and regional levels, allowing countries to develop their own desired outcomes and indicators, and build on existing programs and initiatives. The panel will present the contents of the Culture and Education strategy, and discuss how the strategy fits in the Cook Islands context.
Panel Members:
Huffer, Elise, Human Development Adviser Culture (SPC)
Vunidilo, Tarisi, Secretary-General of the Pacific Islands Museum
Williams, Sonny, Secretary of Culture, Cook Islands
Pamela Takiora Ingram