No.1 Neighbour: Art in Papua New Guinea 1956-2016

112 №1 NEIGHBOUR STRONG WOMEN Taloi Havini works in ceramics, photography, print media, video and mixed media installation. In her practice, she explores indigenous knowledge systems and the politics of place. Havini’s work responds to the history and culture of Bougainville, where she was born, and acknowledges her people’s deep connection to land, despite years of conflict and civil war. YOU WORK ACROSS VARIOUS MEDIA. WHAT IS THE ORIGIN OF YOUR CERAMICS PRACTICE? My mother introduced me to clay when I was a teenager. I grew up watching her paint landscapes ‘ en plein air’ in Bougainville and on camping trips in Australia. I was more interested in mixing paint on the palette and she suggested I try moulding forms with clay, so she taught me hand-building, pinch and coil techniques. As the clay dried and became ‘leather hard’, I enjoyed carving shallow relief designs into the surface. One of the first things I ever made was a form inspired by the gotana (an intricately carved coconut-shell drinking vessel). My father introduced me to ancestral Hakö clan designs. I began to make new forms inspired by objects from Bougainville, such as cylindrical bamboo lime pots, which are used for storing lime consumed with buai (betel nut), as seen in the book Both Sides of Buka Passage and in the Australian Museum collection. 1 I developed my own styles of hand-building with clay and have always wanted to see how far I could push the medium. Ceramics was one of my major subjects in art school. For my thesis, I decided I wanted to learn traditional pottery from Tamana Sarenga, the last surviving master potter from Malasang Village in Buka. I lived in the village for four months and learnt the process of collecting and processing local clays to make traditional utilitarian and ceremonial pots. HOW IMPORTANT IS THE HANDMADE TO UNDERSTANDING YOUR WORK BEROANA (SHELL MONEY) ? Beroana, as it is called in the Hakö region of Buka, is one of the most highly valued forms of currency still used in ceremony across Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands. To manufacture traditional beroana is essentially the act of creating currency from nature (seashells). TALOI HAVINI INTERVIEW BY RUTH M c DOUGALL