- My interest in PNG is more than academic. I grew up in PNG in the years spanning the country's transition from an Australian colony to a new nation, and, since 1984, have worked on many collaborative projects with PNG artists, museum professionals, and academics.
- Extending the Australia-PNG relationship was heralded as a priority by Kevin Rudd, who made PNG his first international state visit as Prime Minister in 2008. With Rudd's departure, once again PNG slipped out of the limelight, and inertia returned. Julia Gillard only made her first state visit to PNG in May 2013, after five years as Prime Minister. Although cultural exchange is soft politics, Australia's political and economic interests have a bearing on the level of cultural engagement.
- The institution was formerly the Queensland Art Gallery (QAG). The Gallery of Modern Art was added in 2006, and the name changed.
- Initially called the Asia-Pacific Triennial, the hyphen was symbolically dropped when Pacific voices spoke out about being an appendage to Asia. Together with Michael Mel, Jonathan Mane-Wheoki, Jim Vivieaere, and Emmanuel Kasarherou, I was an invited member of the Selection Panel for the Pacific, assisting QAG's curatorial team for APT2 and APT3, led by QAG's then Assistant Director Dr Caroline Turner. Deleting the hyphen in ‘Asia-Pacific’ was a topic of much discussion at APT3 meetings.
- APT7 featured artworks by over 140 artists from twenty- five countries across the region.
- Keynote address at The Big Island Workshop, University of Wollongong, 26 November 2009.
- Wendi Choulai and Anna Mel have since passed away.
- Ross Searle, then Director of UQ Art Museum, who had a particular interest in PNG art, was the curatorial advisor for PNG for APT1. The paintings were loaned from the Australian Museum.
- Despite Kauage's impressive career in PNG, and international exposure spanning from 1969 to 2003, he is not well known in Australia and New Zealand.
- After the Beiers left PNG, they invited Kauage to be an artist-in-residence at the University of Beyreuth, Germany, and to exhibit at their Ilewale Haus when they returned to Sydney. See Georgina Beier, Modern Images from Niugini (Milton, Qld.: Jacaranda Press, 1974): n.p.; Ulli Beier, Decolonising the Mind (Canberra: Pandanus Books, 2005).
- Rowan Julie Brown, ‘Exhibition Review: Singsing: The Art of Mathias Kauage’, Journal of Museum Ethnography, no. 16, March 2004; 169–72, 2003, www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/40793750?uid=2&uid=4&sid=21102563162093. Kauage passed away in 2003.
- Hirini Moko Mead, ‘Maori Art Restructured, Reorganised, Re-examined and Reclaimed’, He Pukenga Korero 2, no. 1, Spring 1996; 1–7.
- Kastom values and relationships have long been of research interest to cultural anthropologists, lawyers, and political commentators, including Roger Keesing, Andrew Strathern, Colin Flier, and Ben Bohane. Nicholas Thomas comments briefly on evolving tradition and continuities in style and iconography representing heritage in the design of PNG's National Parliament House. Nicholas Thomas, Oceanic Art (London: Thames and Hudson, 1979), 12–3, 185 respectively.
- Although kastom has not (to my knowledge) been defined in law for PNG, for the neighbouring Torres Strait Islanders, who are also Melanesian, ailan kastom (Island custom) is used to describe the strong sense of culture shared by Islanders. The Commonwealth Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (ATSIC) Act 1989 defines it as ‘the body of customs, traditions observances and beliefs of some or all of the Torres Strait Islanders living in the Torres Strait area, and includes any such customs, traditions, observances and beliefs relating to particular persons, areas, objects or relationships’.
- Michael Mel, ‘Kaibel Ka'a: Shields of Identity”, Second Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (Brisbane: Queensland Art Gallery, 1996), 116. See also Michael O'Hanlon, ‘Modernity and the “Graphicalization” of Meaning: New Guinea Shield Design in Historical Perspective’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, no. 1, 1995; 3.
- Jacob Simet, ‘Cultural Renaissance: National Festivals Bring New Vibrancy to Old Traditions and Customs’, Papua New Guinea Yearbook 2008 (Port Moresby: The National, 2008), 19–24. In 2008, the NCC was a partner with local government and communities in organising major regional festivals, including the National Mask Festival at Kokopo, East New Britain Province.
- Within each cultural/linguistic group in the Bismark Archipelago (West and East New Britain and New Ireland Provinces), the male secret societies have characteristic sets of masks and other objects made for funerary rites and initiation Strictly speaking, the tubuan societies are specific to Tolai people of East New Britain and some New Ireland societies. Apparently, in Tok Pisin, the term tubuan is applied more generically to other East and West New Britain groups.
- For example, the tubuan Kamut Mut masks collected by the curators of QAGOMA from the 2011 National Mask Festival, Kokopo, East New Britain, which were subsequently displayed in APT7.
- See the QAGOMA website for extensive information on these masks and the artists, www.qagoma.qld.gov.au/exhibitions/past/2012/apt7_asia_pacific_triennial_of_contemporary_art/artists.
- Michael Mel, ‘Bilas’, in Contemporary Art in Papua New Guinea, ed. Susan Cochrane (Sydney: Crawford House Press, 1997), 127.
- Ibid., 128.
- Queensland Art Gallery, ‘APT2: Wendi Choulai Egu Rami Artist Performance’, 27 September 1996, QAGOMA APT Archive (video), http://tv.qagoma.qld.gov.au/2012/11/08/apt2-wendi-choulai-egu-rami-artist-performance/.
- Wendi died in 2001 from breast cancer.
- Wendi Choulai, cited by Jill Kinnear in her introduction to David Tenenbaum, Wendi Choulai (Melbourne: Melbourne Books, 2009), 2.
- Wendi Choulai, ‘Indigenous Oceanic Design in Today's Market: A Personal Perspective’ (Master's diss., RMIT University, Melbourne, 1996), 22–5.
- See note 22.
- Ibid.
- Magiciens de la Terre addressed the Eurocentric selection, format, and ideology of the Paris Biennial, a show that failed to include non-Western artists and art styles. Martin selected one hundred artists: fifty from the US and Europe, and fifty from elsewhere (whom he chose through ‘artistic intuition’). He believed that his inclusion of non-Western artists would begin to de-centre Western art practice. The show was met with vehement criticism.
- The Pacific specialists invited onto the APT2 curatorial team were Jim Vivieaere, Jonathan Mane-Wheoki, Michael Mel, Tom Mosby, Emmanuel Kasarherou, and me.
- Susan Cochrane, ‘Pacific Peoples: Papua New Guinea, New Caledonia, Vanuatu, Torres Strait, Indigenous Australia’, Second Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (Brisbane: Queensland Art Gallery, 1996), 55.
- Queensland Art Gallery, ‘APT 2: Michael and Anna Mel Artist Performance’, 27 September 1996, QAGOMA APT Archive (video), http://tv.qagoma.qld.gov.au/2012/11/08/apt2-michael-anna-mel-artist-performance/#.URsK0h2cin8.email.
- Lisa Chandler, ‘“The Asia-Pacific Effect”: Geo-Cultural Grouping at the Asia Pacific Triennials’, Limina, no. 13 (2007): 43. Note that Cargoes and the Purtang performance were recreated as part of the ‘Shrines for the Next Millennium’ in the Sydney Olympics Arts Festival in 2000.
- Nick Jose, ‘Over the Borders’, The Australian, 13 November 1996, 17–8.
- From the Brikiti Cultural Group, artists included Waikua Nera (team leader), Nikit Kiawaul, and Kano Loctai; and from Kwoma Arts, Anton Waiawas (Team Leader), Kevin Apsepa, Simon Goiyap, Jamie Jimok, Nelson Makamoi, Rex Maukos, and Terry Pakiey.
- Martin Fowler is an architect with a long association with PNG. He was one of the architects of the PNG National Museum constructed in 1985 and a Lecturer in Architecture at Lae Institute of Technology. Martin Fowler, personal communication with the author, 10 December 2012.
- See my article on this issue: ‘Mr Pretty's Predicament: Ethnic Art Collectors in Melanesia for the Commonwealth Arts Advisory Board, 1968–73’, Hunting the Collectors: Pacific Collections in Australian Museums, ed. Susan Cochrane and Max Quanchi (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2011), 235–66.
- The considerable cost of the residency of Abelam and Kwoma artists to create the PNG structures in Brisbane was met by a major corporate sponsor, Kramer Ausenco.
- Kevin Aspepa, personal communication with the author, 10 December 2012.
- The debates and decision-making processes concerning the selection of artists, materials, and the nature of the structures are clearly articulated on the QAGOMA's website.
- In 2008, the Directors of the QAGOMA and Queensland Museum were offered places in a Trade Mission to PNG. Although opportunities to meet artists in their own environments were limited, the Queensland Government of the time was concerned by the occupational health and safety risks that curators may face undertaking extended fieldwork in remote areas. Tony Ellwood (then Director of QAG), personal communication with the author, 13 November 2008.
- German curator Eva Raabe has commented on how difficult it is in Europe to get the work of urban-based painters Martin Morububuna and Joe Nalo accepted as contemporary art, rather than as merely of ethnographic interest. See Raabe, ‘Modernism or Folk Art?: The Reception of Pacific Art in Europe’, Art Monthly Australia, July 1999; 21.
- Pamela Rosi, ‘Deploying Papua New Guinea Artists as “Cultural Ambassadors” in the Global Promotion of Contemporary PNG Art: Evaluating Larry Santana's Visits to the USA’ (paper presented to IX PAA Symposium, Musée du Quai Branly, 7 July 2007). In 2008, Rosi co-curated, with Michael Mel, Hailans to Ailans, an innovative touring exhibition that morphed into different forms at each venue: Rebecca Hossack Gallery, London; Alcheringa Gallery, Victoria, Canada; and the de Young Museum, San Francisco. Sadly, Hailans to Ailans was not toured to Australia or New Zealand.
- Port Moresby-based artist Jeffrey Feeger curated the PNG Pavilion at Shanghai Expo and made an impression with his performance, painting portraits live on stage.
- The catalogue of this exhibition is available online: http://hailanstoailans.com.
- Gickmai Kundun was the first PNG artist to be invited to participate in an Australian biennale, the 1979 Biennale of Sydney.
- For the difficulties around the acceptance of PNG art in Europe, see Eva Raabe, ‘Modernism or Folk Art?’ (see note 41), and, in the US, see Pamela Rosi, ‘Deploying Papua New Guinea Artists’. ‘Gatekeepers’ is Rosi's term.
- Bernard Narokobi, ‘Transformations in Art and Society’, in Luk Luk Gen!: Look Again!, ed. Susan Cochrane Simons and Hugh Stevenson (Townsville: Perc Tucker Regional Gallery, 1990), 21.
- Podcast of Terry Smith lecture, 13 February 2008, at Kluge- Rhue Collection of Aboriginal Art, University of Virginia. http://aboriginalartandculture.wordpress.com/2008/03/02/exciting-times-at-the-kluge-ruhe-aboriginal-art-collection/
- Lisa Chandler, ‘The Asia-Pacific Effect’, 41. In the 1990s, international biennales spread to non-Western centres, such as Beijing, Seoul, Havana, Johannesburg, and Noumea, each with a widening field of local artists.
- Michael Wesley, ‘Transcentury’, APT7: The 7th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, Queensland Art GallerylGallery of Modern Art (Brisbane: QAGOMA, 2012), 60–5.
- Rex Butler, ‘APT 7: The Future Show’, ABC Arts Blog, Friday 23 November 2012, www.abc.net.au/arts/blog/arts-desk/asia-pacific-triennial-Butler-preview-121123/default.htm.
Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art
Volume 13, 2013 - Issue 1: Contact