The Seventh Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art

1 For centuries, Melanesia has produced much spectacular and interesting traditional architecture. Key generic types identified in Martin Fowler, ‘Five types of Melanesia traditional architecture’ in Additions: SAHANZ 19th Annual Conference , Brisbane, 2002 are: Sepik and North Coast post and beam forms (Kwoma koromb are an eccentric variation of the type), highlands roundhouses, bowed roof forms ( motu , manus , massim ), tilted forms (dramatically, Abelam korumbo , Papuan Gulf ravi ), and longhouses. Within these were numerous distinctive variations. Now, old photographs in foreign collections are the only remaining evidence that many of them ever existed. 2 In 1973 Chief Minister of PNG, Michael Somare, sent me as his chosen architect to see these buildings firsthand before completing designs for the new National Museum in Port Moresby. 3 Melanesian art and building was ephemeral: organic materials quickly deteriorate in tropical climates, and ritual buildings often symbolically represented the natural cycle of regeneration (at times seen as magic), life and death. Furthermore, earthquakes, landslides, volcanoes, tsunamis and a river’s erosive force in flood, can completely remove buildings and settlements in Melanesia. 4 In 2004, colleagues at PNG University of Technology said that the Abelam stopped building haus tambaran years ago. Bowden, in Creative Spirits says that Kwoma youth in Bangwis in the 1980s were not learning their elders’ painting skills. In 2011 river guides advised, ‘no old stuff is there anymore’. Apparently, however, resistance is strong in at least parts of Bangwis. Martin Fowler to Ross Bowden: conversation May 2012. 5 Kwoma artists aspiring to Tongwinjamb Three built a new koromb during 2011 while being keen to concurrently educate their young, own mobile phones, make a living and have a website. 6 Featuring the now uncommon tallest korumbos , Abelam images became mandatory for PNG material. They appeared on book covers, postcards, tourist brochures, illustrated maps, even postage stamp first day covers. 7 Prepared for initiations, interior surfaces are painted like the facades, and crowded with sacred carved and painted figures. Magic attached to Abelam painting — these items were formerly secreted to decay in the bush, releasing the spirits back into nature. See Colin Simpson, Plumes and Arrows , Angus and Robertson, Sydney, p.320 (1965 edition), and Dirk AM Smidt and Noel McGuigan, ‘An Emic and Etic Role for Abelam art’, in Philip Dark and Roger Rose (eds.) Artistic Heritage in a Changing Pacific , Crawford House Press, Bathurst NSW, 1993. 8 Douglas Newton, Crocodile and Cassowary: Religious Art of the Upper Sepik , Museum of Primitive Art, New York, 1967. Ross Bowden, ‘Art, architecture, and collective representations in a New Guinea society’, in Coote and Sheldon: Anthropology, Art, and Aesthetics , Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1992; Creative Spirits: Bark Painting in the Waskuk Hills of North New Guinea , Oceanic Art, Melbourne, 2006. 9 I visited the Ambunti building and photographed it in 1973. It forcefully demonstrated Kwoma painting reliant on control and fluidity of line work, on juxtaposing contrasting background and foreground colors — all to produce perceptions of dazzling, almost hypnotic impact. 10 This is first and foremost seen in the eyes of Abelam painted faces and then becomes evident in other, including Kwoma, artwork. Something in this Kwoma imagery also strongly resonates with painted mythological figures in the Shinto shrines of Nikko, Japan. 11 Bowden, 2006. 233