The Ninth Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art

213 ESSAYS The continuing strength of the customs of relational personhood and the creative practices that maintain them stand as resolute as any revolutionary army in the face of a commodity economy and its potentially devastating effects. Like the Tutana and the works by other indigenous artists featured in APT9, the value of the works in Women’s Wealth lies primarily in the relationships and connections surrounding the objects. Gallery staff became part of the economy of this group of works through the relationships and labour involved — liaising with artists, sourcing funding, organising travel, and presenting the artworks. By extension, learning about these works through APT9 public programs allows audiences to enter into the communities that the artists are seeking to build. One of the hopeful promises of contemporary art can be found in the spaces that it provides for the development of ‘extended communities of activity, innovation and support’. 16 Contemporary Pacific artists and communities working with the Gallery for APT9 offer meaningful examples of the ways artists are drawing on their own robust systems of cultural knowledge and exchange in the creation of works that offer distinctive value and relational significance now and into the future. Ruth McDougall In memory of Gideon Kakabin (1956–2018) Endnotes 1 Anthony Byrt, This Model World: Travels to the Edge of Contemporary Art , Auckland University Press, Auckland, 2016, pp.4–5. 2 Reihana references the indigenous cultures of Australia, Aotearoa New Zealand, Samoa, Tonga, Cook Islands, Tahiti, Hawai’i, Vanuatu and north- western Canada. 3 The idea of articulating relationships through time and space is prominent in Tonga, Samoa, Hawai’i, Cook Islands and Tahiti, as well as Reihana’s own Māori culture. 4 Refer to Gideon Kakabin’s essay in this volume: ‘Gunantuna (Tolai people)’, p.63. 5 When Diwarra is bound together in a ring it is known as a Loloi . The largest and most significant Loloi are known as Tutana . A large amount of the Diwarra was sourced with the assistance of local government offices, which receive it as payment for fines and fees. 6 This includes the anthropological writings of Bronislaw Malinowski ( Argonauts of the Western Pacific , 1922), Annette B Weiner (1976), Marilyn Strathern (1981) and Hermkens and Lepani (2017); see endnote 7. 7 The debate around women’s wealth began with Annette B Weiner’s Women of Value, Men of Renown: New Perspectives in Trobriand Exchange (University of Texas Press, Austin, 1976), and Marilyn Strathern’s response: ‘Culture in a netbag: The manufacture of a subdiscipline in anthropology’, Man: A Monthly Record of Anthropological Science , vol.16, no.4, 1981, pp.665–88. 8 For example, see Anna-Karina Hermkens and Katherine Lepani (eds), Sinuous Objects: Revaluing Women’s Wealth in the Contemporary Pacific , ANU Press, Canberra, 2017. 9 The Bougainville Civil War, or Bougainville conflict, was a decade-long armed conflict between the Papua New Guinea military and secessionist forces, including the Bougainville Revolutionary Army (BRA). Ignited by local concerns over the environmental consequences of the Rio Tinto- owned Panguna mine and the distribution of royalties, the war claimed the lives of 15 000–20 000 people. 10 A matrilineal system includes land ownership and status (chieftan system). Most of Bougainville and the islands comprising Choiseul Province in the Solomon Islands have matrilineal societies, with the exception of Buin (patrilineal) in South Bougainville and some areas of Central District which practise bilateral kinship. 11 The independence referendum is expected to be held on 19 July 2019. 12 Workshop participants included: Bougainville: Kiria Asike, Jesmaine Sakoi Gano, Aida Pais, Elizabeth Marata, Elizabeth Saman, Adelaide Aniona, Helen Miriona, Pauline Anis, Emma Markusu, Josephine Kepaku and Sister Theresita Alona; Solomon Islands: Joy Madada, Gwendalyn Dumosoe, Imelda Teqae, Georgianna Lepping; Australia: Taloi Havini, Elisa Carmichael, Janet Fieldhouse and Kay Lawrence. 13 Tuhu are created in North Bougainville amd are worn by women in public ceremonies relating to death, matrimony and the investiture of clan chiefs. 14 This ceremony took place in the village of Havehe in the Hakö-speaking region of North Bougainville. 15 At the commencement of the project, Sana Balai also gifted the author with a name and beroana (shell money). 16 Byrt, p.5. Kiria Asike and Sana Balai scraping noni root, Women’s Wealth workshop, Nazareth Rehabilitation Centre, Chabai, Bougainville, September 2017 / Photograph: Taloi Havini