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

78 №1 NEIGHBOUR STORIES To properly see the paintings gracing the front of the Haus Tambaran (men’s spirit houses) in many of the villages along the Sepik River and its tributaries, you have to tilt your head backwards. With your throat exposed and your body dwarfed by the scale of what is above, this experience is a carefully orchestrated one — the buildings’ makers want you to feel and behave in a particular way in relation to the higher force to whom the building is dedicated. The paintings once found on the facade of the three Haus Tambaran in the village of Kambot on the Keram River were painted primarily in white line on a black ground. The emergence of the outlined figures, from the dark ground, mirrors their movement from the sacred chambers of the haus into public view. Kambot artist Simon Nowep (1902–84) was the last man fully initiated into the sacred knowledge, songs and images associated with the haus. Nowep’s oldest living son, Simon Maro, describes how, when his father was still a baby: . . . just two weeks old, they wrapped him up and carried him up the steps of the Haus Tambaran . . . they brought him into the inner room— a taboo place, so that he could acquire, see and understand the power of the spirits that resided in this room and know and understand them. 1 As in many Sepik communities, rapid social change brought about by colonisation and the introduction of Christianity, as well as the military occupation by Japanese forces during World War Two, disrupted traditional cycles of village life in Kambot. In many ways, Nowep straddled two worlds — as a young man, he was made a catechist for the Catholic mission, though he was deeply disturbed at the removal of works from the Haus Tambaran, deemed dangerous by the missionaries and attractive to collectors. Despite the pressures of the church, Nowep resolutely continued to paint and to pass on to a younger generation the knowledge and values instilled by his elders. Nowep created works deeply connected to the spiritual traditions he learnt as a child. According to Sepik elder and philosopher the late Bernard Narokobi, Melanesian spirituality involves seeing: . . . the human person in his totality with the spirit world, as well as the animal and plant world. This human person is not absolute master of the universe, but an important component in an interdependent world of the person with the animal, the plant and the spiritual. 2 In the drawings Nowep created for Helen Dennett 3 — using the materials she provided in the early 1970s — this interconnectedness is clear. Primary ancestor and spirit figures, Mopul and Wain, together with the less benevolent deman and konyim spirits, are placed in close association with local animals and plants. The stories associated with these figures carry knowledge about the environment and its cycles, as well as lessons about important symbiotic relationships and the consequences should the proper balance not be maintained. Nowep also drew three pictures of a Christian god at the request of Dennett. In each drawing, the figure is accompanied by other spirits — angels — as well as animals and natural phenomenon. The space of these drawings, like that of his other works, is very different to the perspectival space of Western art traditions. Everything coexists on the same plane. The figures appear to summon one another and to fit together, like pieces in a complex visual puzzle. These drawings are significant early explorations of a faith Simon Nowep struggled with and turned away from in middle age, returning to the inner chambers of the haus and the strength of the old ways. 1 Simon Maro Nowep, interview with Daniel Mueller and Elizabeth Cox, Kambot, August 2014. 2 Bernard Narokobi, ‘The Melanesian way’, in The Melanesian Way , Institute of Papua New Guinea Studies, Boroko, c.1980, p.6. 3 Helen Dennett is a teacher who has spent substantial periods of time in Papua New Guinea since the 1960s, together with her husband Paul Dennett. These drawings were later reproduced by Helen Dennett as black-and-white prints. SIMON NOWEP Wain and his followers c.1974 SIMON NOWEP'S SPIRITUAL SPACES RUTH M c DOUGALL