1993 APT1 Conference : Identity, tradition and change

4 in this way they are very sacred and very very exclusive. Some of them are kept in spirit houses called the House Tumburan(?), some of these are very dominant buildings in the city, some of these houses are as old as 200 years and the poles are very high, 30 feet high in some instances. Now some of this art is gender oriented. The making of the bilungs, the string bags, some of the utensils - only women can make these artforms - men are now allowed to do them and other forms of art can be practised only by men and even others can only be practised by initiated men. So they are very highly classified and very highly ordered. I’m speaking about classical art, the long yams or food items - some of them are 6 or 7ft long, they are very delicately decorated, the slit-gongs(?) and the drums and front of chiefs houses are specifically decorated and this type of design can never be used by other people. These forms of art are still being practised and are very much a part of the people. Moving to the third part regarding the contemporary art, this form of art is very recent, beginning in the early 60’s when high schools were established. In the 60’s there were only two high schools in the whole country which has a population of 4 million people now and as we moved on to the late 70’s, when Papua New Guinea became independent in 1975, I was a young man, just returned from the Law School, and the sense of nationalism became very important so we had to establish institutions like National Cultural Council and Museum, Art Gallery, National School of Arts, the National School for Making Movies and National Institute that collects material for writing and so on. These institutions have been established, they’re generally poorly funded in the context of limited resources, but they have been maintained with greater or lesser support. These institutions continue the contemporary arts mode, descriptive in the sense that they talk about a change. The artists themselves, some of the art you will see, they are all based from the village, the present artists are not the products of Schools of Art. The Arts School itself was changed from a centre of arts to CASUALAARTGALL.TPl 24 May 1994