What do a traditional Maori canoe (waka) and a cattle truck have in common?...In both these cases these vehicles were conveyors of culture. These images are central to two collaborative works at the second Asia Pacific Triennial of Pacific Art at the Queensland Art Gallery.
Exhibition review Secret Places
Sieglinde Karl, Hazel Smith, Kate Hamilton, Ron Nagorka
Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery,
Touring regional Australia through Contemporary Art Services Tasmania and the national Exhibitions Touring Scheme.
The artist writes of the issues facing her as a citizen of Papua New Guinea, a descendant of the Motu Koita people, being female and an artist/textile designer. Her traditional grass skirts were included in the Asia-Pacific Triennial.
Book review The Necessity of Craft: Development and Women's Craft Practice in the Asian Pacific Region
Edited by Lorna Kaino
University of Western Australia Press 1995
RRP $24.95
Written with Vincent Megaw. Looks at land claims and the role of artworks in these claims in the context of the exhibition 'Native Titled Now' shown as part of the Telstra Festival of Arts 1996. Good overview of indigenous art practice and talks about artists such as Raymond Arone Meeks, Lin Onus, Gordon Bennett, Alice Hinton-Bateup, Avril Quaill, Kerry Giles, Daphne Naden, Mick Namarari, Turkey Tolson, Danie Mellor, Jonathan Kumintjara Brown, Clifford Possum, Ellen Jose, Lindsay Bird Mpetyane, Heather Shearer and Kathleen Wallace.
Brief article outlining Pacific Wave, a celebration and investigation of contemporary trends in art and cultural life of the Pacific taking place across Sydney November 2-17 1996.
For those depositing films with a significant Maori content, the New Zealand Film Archive has developed a Deposit Agreement which acknowledges that named Maori guardians have spiritual guardianship authority over their image treasures in perpetuity. This goes way beyond white copyright regimes.
Culturally relevant theatre in education in Papua New Guinea challenges, questions, asserts, transgresses, subverts, opposes, resists and negotiates with the demands of political and cultural relations. It offers new forms of representation and contributes to the process of destabilising and decentering the domination of Western processes of teaching, learning and performance.
An alternative festival celebrating the people of the Pacific was held on one of the outer islands (Manono) in Western Samoa at the same time as the official Pacific Festival of the Arts in Apia. The festival was conducted from 8-23 September 1996.