Peter, a Senior Lecturer of Art History, says Art in Oceania: A History encourages people to look at Pacific art in new ways.
“Until recently, the genre had been to present an overarching regional survey that looked at tribal art and carving—the kind of pieces you might find in an ethnographic museum—from particular places or cultural areas.
“There was a lot happening in the field that wasn’t reflected in that approach, not just contemporary art but also the influence of things like Christianity, the world wars, colonisation and independence, trade, tourism and migration,” says Peter.
Art in Oceania: A History breaks new ground by exploring historical and current influences on indigenous art in the Pacific, covering genres ranging from ancient rock art and ritual architecture to contemporary painting and installation.
The book’s 500 pages and more than 500 illustrations include the earliest archaeological work through to works created in 2012. It has been published by Thames & Hudson in the United Kingdom and Yale University Press in the United States.
Many existing books on Oceanic Art are individually authored publications by authorities in the northern hemisphere, but Peter took a different approach. Seven of the world’s leading authorities on Pacific Art collaborated to produce Art in Oceania, bringing together the perspectives of Māori, Pasifika and European scholars.
Peter edited the tome with Nicholas Thomas, Professor of Historical Anthropology at Cambridge University, and Stella Ramage, a PhD student in Art History at Victoria.
Others who wrote material include Sean Mallon, Senior Curator, Pacific Cultures, at Te Papa, with whom Peter had his earliest conversations about the possibility of writing the book; and Dr Damian Skinner, a curator at Auckland Museum and current Newton Fellow at Cambridge University.
Additional contributions come from authors based at the University of Auckland, the British Museum and University College in London. Postgraduate students in Victoria’s art history programme have also worked on the book.
Marsden funding was pivotal to the project but resourcing has also been collaborative with other contributions coming from Victoria and Auckland universities, Te Papa, the British Museum, the UK-based Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology and Arts & Humanities Research Council.
Examples of the topics covered include Nicholas’s writing on early settlement and voyaging in Western Oceania and art, trade and exchange in New Guinea from 1700–1940.
Sean’s subjects include the impact World War II had on visual art and tourist art and its markets since 1945. Peter’s contributions range from exploring art and decolonisation to the globalisation of contemporary Pacific art.
In addition to the main authors, the book includes many other voices, says Peter.
“They come through featured quotations from all sorts of sources such as letters, missionary journals and artists’ own writings.”
The book will be valuable for scholars and students, says Peter, but will also be of interest to general readers who are thinking about New Zealand’s place in the Pacific or the region generally.
“It rewards the browser. Many of the illustrations have extended captions and there are short features and stories scattered throughout the book.”
Illustrations have been gathered from museums and collections around the world, direct from artists, or commissioned by photographers specifically for the book.
It’s not the definitive book on Oceanic art, says Peter, but it covers the topic on an unprecedented scale and scope.
“Overall, I think it shows that art in Oceania is the product of its history and the creative way
Pacific peoples have borrowed, interpreted, incorporated new ideas and reflected their world in their art.”