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

52 №1 NEIGHBOUR SING-SING Many Papua New Guinean villages have a central open space or dedicated area where their clans engage in sing‑sing. These clearings are places of ritual and ceremony, spaces where the past and present meet through processes of creative enactment. Ancestral beings are regularly invited into these spaces, either through masked figures or through the performance of particular songs, dances or chants. Their presence is sought so the living can restore balance to the community, or as a way of marking significant events, including marriage, initiation, hunting, warfare and harvests. 1 From the early 1900s, colonial administrators, excited by the spectacle and elaborate finery displayed in the sing-sings of the Highland cultures, orchestrated large group gatherings to impress visiting dignitaries. Such events resulted in designated public spaces in the administrative centres of Goroka and Mount Hagen for the annual coming together of groups for large shows. 2 The first Goroka show in 1956 was instigated by a committee of colonial administrators, missionaries, kiaps (patrol officers), plantation owners, and agricultural and health workers in the hope of uniting settler and indigenous populations. It formed part of the administration’s mandate to pacify, control and civilise the indigenous people of the region by providing a secular space for culture. 3 As the events developed, entrepreneurial Highlanders, steeped in traditions of competition around the spectacle and power of their tribal finery, embraced the opportunities that allowed them to showcase their culture and impress their rivals, as well as win prizes and entice tourists to buy artefacts. The annual Goroka show thus came to play a role in the transformation of the Highlands in the mid twentieth century. Shields with dynamic patterns once dazzled approaching enemies; in the competitive show arena, they were presented as finery for display. Run by different provincial authorities, today, the annual shows in Goroka, Mount Hagen, Milne Bay, East New Britain and Madang create a circuit for tourists keen to experience the diversity of Papua New Guinean culture. Pieces collected and commissioned by the Gallery from the 2011 National Mask Festival in Kokopo, East New Britain, attest the ways artists and communities continue to use these opportunities to educate visitors about their culture. In the spirit of their local sing-sing spaces, they also creatively explore dialogues between customary ways and new ideas. For instance, innovative works, such as the Mary tokatokoi headdress created by the Iatapal cultural group in East New Britain, fuse the group’s adherence to Christian faith with the tradition of creating masks to honour and bring forth mythical ancestors and cultural heroes. Incorporating culturally significant materials and worn to perform sacred traditional dances, these headdresses assert the importance and power of the Madonna in contemporary Iatapal society. In the spaces created for sing-sings and annual shows, new forms of artistic expression do not simply draw on the past, they also provide a creative and evolving means of addressing aspirations of the present. SHOWS AND FESTIVALS RUTH M c DOUGALL 1 Barry Craig, ‘Introduction’, in Barry Craig (ed.), Living Spirits with Fixed Abodes: The Masterpieces Exhibition of the Papua New Guinea National Museum and Art Gallery [exhibition catalogue], University of Hawai’i Press, Honolulu, and Crawford House, Belair, SA, 2010, pp.2–3. 2 Natalie Wilson, ‘Plumes and pearlshells: The shows of the New Guinea Highlands’, in Natalie Wilson (ed.), Plumes and Pearlshells: The Art of the New Guinea Highlands [exhibition catalogue], Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 2014, p.13. 3 Wilson, p.13. IATAPAL CULTURAL GROUP Mary 2011 PP.50–1 Bilas, Goroka show, September 2014 / Photograph: Ruth McDougall