Archives: Art For Sale

Exhibitions: Oceanic Artwork & New Guinea Art at The National Gallery of Victoria

Over two & a half decades Todd Barlin worked with Judith Ryan to build up the Oceanic Art collection at the NGV National Gallery of Victoria.

This superb State Art Gallery had fantastic exhibitions of Oceanic Art in many different spaces at different times, they always made the artworks & exhibition spaces look their very best.

Judith Ryan selected from Todd Barlin the finest Oceanic Art for the NGV Collection, they got both older Artworks & new Artworks but were the most interested in artworks that had information about the artists & their communities and field photos that Todd took in New Guinea

Sana Balai was assistant Curator at NGV National Gallery of Victoria and she was a great pleasure to work in conjunction with Judith Ryan.

It was such a great experience to see Oceanic & New Guinea Art set in clean large spaces with modern & Australian Art.

Above are some photos of NGV Exhibitions from those decades of collaboration.

I first went to Papua New Guinea in 1985 for an adventure & what I found was that I really enjoyed being with the people of New Guinea, over the next 38 years I spent extensive time spent collecting and documenting traditional art & ceremonies in remote areas of Papua New Guinea & West Papua, The Solomon Islands & Vanuatu & the other Pacific Islands countries. During these travels, I made major collections of New Guinea & Oceanic Art for major Museums and Public Art Galleries

I was honoured by being in the prestigious Louvre Museum Magazine for the collections I made for The Museum of African & Oceanic Art Paris in1996 (now the Musee Quai Branly) for the exhibition “Asmat et Mimika d’ Irian Jaya April 1996 At THE MUSEE NATIONAL des ARTS D’AFRIQUE et d’ OCEANIE, Paris

See all of the links & photos in my new EXHIBITIONS GALLERY and there is the link to the article in the prestigious Louvre Magazine 1996

I have artwork for Museums & Art Galleries but also for collectors at every stage of their collecting. I want to encourage people to explore the fine art of New Guinea & West Papua and the Pacific Islands and to be able to see and touch the artworks in a relaxed and friendly manner in my Sydney Gallery.  I would like to invite you to visit my gallery and see the artworks in person and also look at my website www.oceanicartsaustralia.com  where there are many Galleries & Sub Galleries to explore.

My Gallery of nearly 40 years is the last physical gallery in Sydney that specialises in New Guinea & Oceanic Art. Sydney is just a couple hours’ flight to New Guinea & the Pacific Islands where all of these amazing artworks came from, Australia’s closest neighbours.

TAPA: BARK CLOTH FROM THE PACIFIC at the Campbelltown City Art Gallery, Sydney Australia 1999

This superb exhibition showcased Tapa Cloth from the Pacific Islands curated by Greta North & Tom Gilbert at The Campbelltown City Art Gallery and it had a big display of Tapa Paintings from Lake Sentani and Humboldt Bay area from the Todd Barlin Collection & a contribution of the essay for the exhibition booklet (below)

Tapa Cloth Paintings from Lake Sentani & Humboldt Bay area of West Papua by Todd Barlin 1999

The appreciation of indigenous art has come a long way in the past ten years, indigenous artists from around the world have benefited from the interest in their cultural heritage and visual arts. This is certainly the case with the Tapa Cloth Paintings from Northwest Irian Jaya or West Papua

Tapa Cloth Paintings from Lake Sentani & Humboldt Bay in NW Irian Jaya are locally known are Maro Smo. Early accounts of local people making and wearing decorated Tapa cloth are sketchy, but it seems that married women did wear Tapa Cloth Skirts with were sometimes decorated with designs.

An early 20th-century photograph by the ethnographer Paul Wirtz in 1926 shows a large painted Tapa Cloth displayed next to a grave of young women (published in the book The Art of Northwest New Guinea by Suzanne Greub 1992 page 130 shows this early Paul Wirtz photo)

The Tapa Cloth paintings that the outside world associates with Lake Sentani & Humboldt Bay were mainly collected in the late 1920s by Jacques Viot, the French surrealist author & art dealer who made a trip to the area in 1929 and collected a number of Tapa Cloth Paintings along with the more famous wood sculptures from Lake Sentani (one of the most famous sculptures from Viot’s trip to New Guinea is the double Lake Sentani Figure now in the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra)

These works of art had a great impact on the Parisian Art scene when exhibited in Paris on his return, especially on the surrealist artists like Joan Miro.

By the mid-1920s, artists active in Paris held a fascination with objects created in tribal communities in the Pacific. In their search for art beyond the real, surrealists turned to sculptures that came from the dreams and imaginations of Pacific Islanders, who were themselves considered exotic

From World War 1 through to the 1950s, it seems that the practice of making decorated Tapa Cloth largely died out. In the 1970s however European interest brought about a revival of Tapa Painting, this stimulus was essential to the continuity of the art and its progression.

Many of the design elements in these more contemporary Tapa Cloths are ancient traditional designs that belonged to specific clans & chiefly families.

One of the main Lake Sentani motifs is called Fouw, an interlocking spiral design that is said to represent eternity and is associated with to power of the chief.  The Fouw designs are commonly used on many types of traditional carved wood objects including women’s canoe paddles, food bowls & plates, and house posts that are all related to chiefly families & clans.

Other common designs are stylized totemic animals, birds & fish that are all plentiful in their natural environment. There are also depictions of powerful mythological spirits that inhabit the lake, bush & ocean.

The artists in Lake Sentani & Humboldt Bay have recently received some positive results from their artistic endeavors, they have had several exhibitions and articles have been written about their art of Tapa Cloth Painting and its revival. Consequently, this interest in their art has meant sales of their Tapa Cloth Paintings to international buyers which has brought prestige and economic benefits to the artists and their communities. The best Tapa Cloth Painters some are represented in this exhibition are very pleased with the recognition and the financial rewards they have received.

One of the most beneficial aspects of the revival of this ancient art form is that is has given strong cultural symbolism for all of the Melanesian people in West Papua, this is a time of great changes in West Papua as there is a great influx of non-Melanesian people perhaps leading to them being a minority in their own traditional land.  Whenever West Papuans see one of their traditional designs it reinforces a feeling of their unique cultural identity.

The people of Lake Sentani & Humboldt Bay would feel a great sense of pride in their inclusion of this exhibition of Pacific Tapa Cloth.

May 2023 post note: 24 years after this exhibition, though I have not been back to the Lake Sentani area for 2 decades I have seen some recent Tapa Cloth Paintings from the area, they seem to be less spontaneous and a bit more rigid. There was a flowering of artistic inspiration for Tapa Cloth Paintings in the 1970s & 1980s but some of the older artists would have passed away and like all over the world often younger people are not as interested in their traditional art.

Exhibition: The Shields of Melanesia at The Sydney 2000 Olympic Arts Festival Sydney College of the Arts

This superb exhibition of Melanesian Shields was sponsored by The Oceanic Art Society Sydney & curated by Geoff Carey.

The exhibition showed New Guinea Shields in a way never seen before in Australia at the Sydney College of the Arts who gave use of its large exhibition spaces to allow this exhibition to be part of The Sydney 2000 Olympic Arts Festival showcasing Pacific Islands Art & Culture.

The exhibition was supposed to be in conjunction with a publication of a book by the same name The Shields of Melanesia that was printed five years later in 2005.

The Shields of Melanesia Edited by Harry Beran and Dr Barry Craig

This is the first comprehensive compilation of the war shields of Melanesia. The volume illustrates more than one hundred types of shields from all cultural areas of Melanesia that used such objects. Approximately eighty percent of the shields illustrated in the book have never appeared in print.

The editors describe why the use of fighting shields in the South Pacific was confined to Melanesia. The typology of war shields used in the book is based on an exhaustive survey of the literature, on the field experience of the authors, and on a survey of the collections of the major Australian museums.

Twenty-Four of the shields shown in photos in this book belong to the Todd Barlin Collection of New Guinea Art 

Todd Barlin Wrote three sections of this book

3.1 Shields from the North Coast of Western New Guinea: Pages 28- 32

5.1 The Shields of the Highlands of Western New Guinea : Pages 112- 1117

6.1 Shields from the Southern Lowlands of Western New Guinea: Pages 155-165

I first went to Papua New Guinea in 1985 for an adventure & what I found was that I really enjoyed being with the people of New Guinea, over the next 38 years I spent extensive time spent collecting and documenting traditional art & ceremonies in remote areas of Papua New Guinea & West Papua, The Solomon Islands & Vanuatu & the other Pacific Islands countries. During these travels, I made major collections of New Guinea & Oceanic Art for major Museums and Public Art Galleries

I was honoured by being in the prestigious Louvre Museum Magazine for the collections I made for The Museum of African & Oceanic Art Paris in1996 (now the Musee Quai Branly) for the exhibition “Asmat et Mimika d’ Irian Jaya April 1996 At THE MUSEE NATIONAL des ARTS D’AFRIQUE et d’ OCEANIE, Paris

See all of the links & photos in my new EXHIBITIONS GALLERY and there is the link to the article in the prestigious Louvre Magazine 1996

I have artwork for Museums & Art Galleries but also for collectors at every stage of their collecting. I want to encourage people to explore the fine art of New Guinea & West Papua and the Pacific Islands and to be able to see and touch the artworks in a relaxed and friendly manner in my Sydney Gallery.  I would like to invite you to visit my gallery and see the artworks in person and also look at my website www.oceanicartsaustralia.com  where there are many Galleries & Sub Galleries to explore.

My Gallery of nearly 40 years is the last physical gallery in Sydney that specialises in New Guinea & Oceanic Art. Sydney is just a couple hours’ flight to New Guinea & the Pacific Islands where all of these amazing artworks came from, Australia’s closest neighbours.

Exhibition: The Monumental Sculpture of West Papua Sydney College of the Arts Sydney 2000: The Todd Barlin Collection of New Guinea Art 

This groundbreaking exhibition of  The Monumental Sculpture of West Papua was part of the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games Arts Festival featuring Arts of the Pacific Islands & the Island of New Guinea

The Sydney College of the Arts part the University of Sydney welcomed me to do this superb exhibition as part of the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games Arts Festival, they offered a large and unique space & technical support to display these monumental sculptures, and they also offered the chance for large coloured walls that made the artworks shine as seen in the photos below.  Todd gave several talks about the collection of artworks and his time spent living with the Asmat & Kamoro ( Mimika) people.  The photos explain the beauty of this exhibition.

The main Asmat creation myth is about the creator Fumeripitjs who was lonely so he carved figures from wood and then he made a drum, when he played the drum the carved wood figures came to life and that is how the first Asmat people were created.  For the Asmat the connection between trees and people and the forest is profound.

The exhibition had a large wall of Asmat Mbis Ancestor Poles & Komoro (Mimika) Mbitoro Ancestor Poles, a group of Ancestral House Posts from the inside of an Asmat Men’s Ceremonial House or Jeu, there was also a large group of Asmat & Mimika Dance Costumes that were used in funerary ceremonies. There were Todd’s field photos & information throughout the exhibition. The exhibition was possible through the assistance of Tom Arthur & Colin Winter & Chris Boylan.

At the close of the exhibition, I invited several Australian Museums & Art Galleries to choose the large-scale sculptures as gifts for their public collections some of which are now on display in The South Australian Museum & The Australian Museum in Sydney.

For this exhibition, there was an essay Asmat Art of Irian Jaya West New Guinea by Todd Barlin in Arts Asia Pacific Magazine Issue 28 October 2000

Asmat art of southern lrian Jaya has been widely exhibited around the world, including in the United States and Europe.

In Sydney in Sep­tember 2000, as part of the Olympic Arts Festival, many will have a chance to see the beauty and richness of Asmat art when ‘The Monumental Sculpture of the Asmat opens at the Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney.

Also, on view at the same venue are The Shields of Oceania’, an exhibition of shields from Melanesia; and ‘Hokianga’, an exhibition by New Zealand photographer Ross T Smith.

Monumental Sculpture of the Asmat, presented by Oceanic Arts Australia, will bring the foyer of the Sydney College of the Arts alive.  Todd Barlin owner of Oceanic Arts Australia, had had a long association with Asmat artists having spent extensive periods in the Asmat region collecting art and documenting ceremonial life, and has sponsored several international exhibitions of Asmat art, including a major exhibition at the National Museum of African & Oceanic Art in Paris in 1996 and another at the National Museum of New Caledonia in 1998.

The Shields of Oceania showcases excellent examples of my Asmat shield collection which are one of the most beautiful forms of Asmat art. Their shape and design motifs are widely varied and examples of the four Asmat regional styles will be exhibited.

The most exciting aspect of planning exhibitions is documenting, through field photographs, the artists and artworks in situ. This process creates a context for the works, illustrating how they have been made and are used. A lack of connection with acknowledgment of the artists in many exhibitions of Oceanic art sadly makes the artists seem anonymous.

Much has been written about the influence of ritual headhunting on Asmat art. It is true that many of the symbols used in Asmat art arc asso­ciated with headhunting, but it is perhaps the Western world’s fascination with ‘gruesome practices’ that has created a focus on this aspect of Asmat’s past ritual life. The complex spiritual beliefs of the Asmat are integral to their expression of art and ceremony. They believe that by honouring their ancestors through correct and continuing rituals, harmony and balance are maintained. Their religious practice includes ritual carving for ceremonies, dance, song, and storytelling. The myth of Asmat’s creation by the creator Fumeripitsj is integral to their ritual woodcarving:

“Fumeripitsj went into the jungle and built a feast house, but was lonely. He cut down trees and carved figures, each with a head and a body and with arms and legs. Some were male and some female. He placed them inside the feast house, but he was still lonely. So, he cut down a tree, hollowed out a section of log, and carved a drum. He covered one end with lizard skin, glu­ing it there with lime and some of his own blood and tied it with rattan. When Fumeripitsj beat on the drum, the figures began to move, awkwardly at first, but then their joints loosened, and they began to dance and sing in a normal way. Thus, the first Asmat came into being “

The Asmat have been quick to see similarities between Christian teachings and their own spiritual concepts, and Christian beliefs have been intertwined with their traditional beliefs to produce a new era of spiritual expression through their art.

Several churches in the Asmat area are adorned with beautiful ritual carvings that symbolize Asmat’s belief in Christianity. The Asmat have retained much of their traditional culture thanks to the encouragement of Bishop Alphonse Sowada (1933- 2014) and the Catholic Fathers of the Crosier Mission in Agats, the main administrative town.  This dedicated group of priests has encouraged the Asmat to retain pride in their traditional culture. In the 1970s the Crosier Mission set up a small museum that houses a fine collection of Asmat art, as well as records of the Asmat’s oral history and ceremonial life.

Monumental Sculpture of the Asmat will include numerous monumental sculptures by Asmat artists, including Mbis Ancestor Poles, architectural house posts from a jeu, or men’s house; wuramon, or Soul Canoes and Jipae Dance Costumes, all of these artworks are representations of deceased ancestors.

The Mbis feast is a ceremony associated with the ritual of headhunting and the initiation of young men. The feast is still performed today and, although headhunting has long ceased, it remains an important aspect of honoring ancestors and teaching the young their responsibilities to their ancestors. House Posts which are made for the men’s house are carvings of human figures representing each family’s ancestors.

Each family has its own place, with a fire pit and a House Post erected in the Men’s Ceremonial House.

Wuramon or Soul Canoes are part of an initiation ceremony for young men and are made in only a few villages in northwest Asmat. The soul canoe, which can be up to twelve meters in length, is carved in the shape of a canoe and is filled with Ancestor Figures & totemic animals, a special house with a central beam in the shape of a crocodile head is built for the initiates, who are secluded there for several weeks before the ceremony, which includes dancing and singing and culminates in the scarification of the young men.

Jipae Dance Costumes are made in both central and northwest Asmat, they are used to drive the spirits of the recently deceased from the village to Safan, the land of the dead. The costumes are made in secrecy and are worn by relatives of the deceased. During the Jipae ceremony, which continues for weeks, the costumed dancers appear outside the ceremonial house and dance to the beat of drums for short intervals. At the end of the ceremony, the dancers are chased out of the village at dusk, never to be seen again, as the spirits go to Safan.

Atsj village in central Asmat has a large population, by Asmat village standards, of around 2000 people, for this reason, Atsj has always had an impressive men’s house with an extensive row of house posts. When the men’s house fell into disrepair the community mobilized to erect another, in 1989 the men’s house was replaced.

Today, there are two markets for Asmat art: the Western art market which looks for older, used pieces and carvings that are made along traditional lines; and the domestic Indonesian market which seeks objects that are aesthetically very different from those originally produced by the Asmat. The Indonesian market requires a symmetrical and polished look, and the carvings are made from hardwood, tables, and chairs with traditional Asmat designs, ashtrays, and other decorative items are made in abundance.

The 1990s saw an explosion in the creation and exportation of Asmat an around the world. While much of this art was of a low standard, there were still good artists producing art of great skill and beauty. Ritual carvings are the responsibility of the wow ipitsj, or expert carvers, and because these sacred items hold the spirit of their ancestors, they are made with much more reverence and care than those that are made for sale.

The Asmat’s desire for financial independence is the main reason for their making artifacts for sale. Artists often face the dilemma of whether to make one quality piece or several lesser pieces in the same length of time, with many artifact traders paying for quantity rather than quality. However, the Asmat will continue to make ritual carvings for themselves; in a transformed way their art and ceremony will continue. How can they not carve when their ancestors have been fashioned from wood and sung to life?

The Asmat people have faced many changes over the past forty years. Timber cutting and more recently the gathering of Agarwood or Kayu Gharu used in incense have affected their way of life. Whole villages are empty while the community spends more and more time in the forest looking for Agarwood or Kayu Gharu

While these industries have provided economic success, with them have come many of the problems experienced by indigenous communities around the world: degradation of the environment, poor health from smoking and the introduction of packaged food, and the effects of western consumerism.

While the financial benefits of carving are small in comparison with those gained by collecting Agarwood or Kayu Gharu the supplies will not last forever. When these resources are depleted perhaps there will be a new generation of Asmat artists who will take up carving, amazing the world with their insight into form and beauty.