Simon Nowep was one of a group of artists in the village of Kambot, on the Keram River in the East Sepik Province of Papua New Guinea, who received art materials from Australian teacher Helen Dennett in the early 1970s. Dennett recently gifted a number of Nowep’s prints to the Gallery, which greatly enhance our…
Continue reading » “Simon Nowep: Maintaining a place for spirits”
The a Bit na Ta project within ‘No.1 Neighbour: Art in Papua New Guinea 1966–2016’ is about a ples (place) — Blanche Bay in East New Britain — as experienced by its local people, the Tolai, between 1875 and 1975. As the full moon slowly rises over the shimmering waters of Blanche Bay, fishermen launch…
‘Twist and loop’ describes both a technique used by women in Papua New Guinea to create knotted fabrics and the movements in choreographed dance sequences performed during sing sing (ceremony and dance). Twist and Loop is also the title of a performance event created for the exhibition ‘No.1 Neighbour: Art in Papua New Guinea 1966–2016’.…
Last year saw Papua New Guinea celebrate 40 years of independence from Australia, but few Australians know the history of the colonial relationship between the countries. It’s time we embraced our closest neighbour writes Sean Dorney. In a book published earlier this year, a Lowy Institute Penguin paperback called The Embarrassed Colonialist, I argue that…
Continue reading » “Out of sight: Australia in Papua New Guinea”
My earliest memory of the Queensland Art Gallery would either be the impossible tension that Rene Magritte creates by stripping the twilight out of his sudden juxtapositions of night and day, or the deep perspective of a lonely Giorgio de Chirico piazza rich with a sense of loss and the horizon’s unlikely possibility. Both were…
Continue reading » “Broaden your knowledge and appreciation of contemporary art”
Nervescape V 2016 by Icelandic artist Hrafnhildur Arnardóttir adorns the walls of the Long Gallery, transforming GOMA in 2016 as we celebrate it turning ten. Exuberant, tactile and sprawling, her installation is constructed from massed bundles of synthetic hair. Under her influence, the smooth white walls of the gallery become something much more animal, untamed…
Continue reading » “How did we install Hrafnhildur Arnardóttir’s ‘Nervescape V’?”
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