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

66 №1 NEIGHBOUR STORIES ‘Stark like warehouses — uncomfortable and hot’ was how artist Georgina Beier described the wards at Laloki Mental Hospital near Port Moresby, an institution she first visited in 1968 after reading a newspaper article about its dismal conditions. 1 Having moved from Nigeria to Papua New Guinea with her husband Ulli the previous year, 2 Beier provided art materials to the patients to help alleviate their boredom. The gesture was met with enthusiasm and the paintings and drawings produced of such quality that Beier subsequently created hand-cut screenprints of works by five of the patients in signed and numbered editions. These prints were exhibited in Port Moresby, as well as England, Scotland, Switzerland, the Philippines and India, between 1968 and 1969, igniting much interest in the modern direction of art in Papua New Guinea. 3 While the aesthetic was indeed modern, the works remained deeply connected to the artists’ experiences, culture and history. In the work of Hape, for example, two mask-like faces are presented like spectres in Orokolo 1968. This work refers to the towering masks created as part of the Hevehe initiation rites. These rites were practised by the Elema people of Orokolo in the Gulf Province until the late 1930s, when many masks and carvings were torched as a result of missionary activity and the ceremonies ceased. Originating from this area of the Papuan Gulf, Hape was of an age to remember the masks and carvings in use. Of Hape’s early works, Ulli Beier observed, ‘They kept closely to the rather austere clan designs, where each zigzag line, each curved or spiky pattern has specific meaning within the history of the clan’. 4 During their time in Papua New Guinea, the Beiers also befriended the late Timothy Akis, whose unique work, combining a new modernist aesthetic with designs and patterns from traditional sources, emerged in the late 1960s. For Akis, the headdresses, as well as the wall matting, weaponry and body decoration, of his people, the Maring of the Simbai Valley near Madang, provided inspiration for the texture and lines of his work. Introduced to the Beiers by anthropologist Georgia Buchbinder, for whom he was acting as an interpreter, Akis transposed into pen and ink the world he knew — creatures of ritual significance, such as cassowaries, flying foxes, snakes and lizards, as well as forest spirits and local men and women. The compositions, structured around individual figures, are filled out with line patterns arranged to communicate specific spatial relationships. Akis maintained a close connection to village life, returning periodically, however, he produced little art there, instead participating in traditional subsistence agriculture. Most of his oeuvre was created during the time he spent in Port Moresby, either with the Beiers or as a student at the University of Papua New Guinea’s Creative Arts Centre. Those who worked with Akis recall that he worked feverishly while he was in the capital, a constant stream of drawings flowing without hesitation from his pen — ‘as if all the drawings were complete in his head’. 5 Training in customary practices required the memorisation of particular patterns and stories for their transmission, namely through oration and body painting, and this process may explain the artist’s approach. Alternatively, as the title of Timothy Akis’s 1975 exhibition at the Creative Arts Centre Gallery suggested, the works may have flowed from a more personal source: ‘Tingting bilong mi (Thoughts belonging to me)’. 1 Georgina Beier, Modern Images from Niugini [special issue of Kovave ], Jacaranda Press, Milton, Qld, 1974, p.19. 2 The Beiers migrated to Papua in the late 1960s, with Ulli taking up a post in the literature department at the newly opened University of Papua New Guinea. During their time in Papua New Guinea, Georgina, herself an artist, worked closely with many of the country’s most celebrated ‘modern’ artists. The Beiers moved to Australia in 1974. 3 Ulli Beier, Decolonising the Mind: The Impact of the University on Culture and Identity in Papua New Guinea, 1971–74 , Pandanus Books, Canberra, 2005, pp.9–10. 4 Ulli Beier, pp.31–2. 5 Bob Browne, quoted in Hugh Stevenson, ‘The naïve group of artists’, in Susan Cochrane Simons and Hugh Stevenson (eds), Luk Luk Gen! Look Again!: Contemporary Art from Papua New Guinea [exhibition catalogue], Perc Tucker Regional Gallery, Townsville, 1990, p.49. PP.64–5 Children learning painting, Tongwinjamb, October 2012 / Photograph: Johan Gabrielsson PP.68–9 HAPE Orokolo 1968 TIMOTHY AKIS Liklik pikinini pilai wan taim rokrok, palai na pisin (small boy playing with a frog, a lizard and a bird) c.1979 EARLY PRINTS: HAPE AND TIMOTHY AKIS RUTH M c DOUGALL