Oceania symposium
Thursday 27 September 2018 11am - 6pm
The Benjamin West Lecture Theatre, Burlington Gardens, Royal Academy of Arts
£45. Includes a complimentary ticket to the Oceania exhibition.
Oceania
Terms and conditions
This symposium explores the power and diversity of Oceanic art, and the politics of its circulation, interpretation and curation today.
Drawing on the experience of leading scholars, experts and art-world professionals, this one-day symposium aims to offer a unique perspective on the art of the region of Oceania.
Responding to the magnificence, range and dynamism of works in the Oceania exhibition, this international symposium explores spiritual power, social value, style and history through the art of the region, from the earliest times to the present.
Subjects covered will include:
• Voyaging, place-making and encounter through Oceanic genres
• Oceanic aesthetics, performance and exchange
• The violence and cross-cultural fertility of the colonial encounter
• The making of collections from Oceania in Europe
• The revaluation and negotiation of those collections today
• Contemporary engagements with heritage in the Pacific
• Contemporary art from the Pacific on a global stage
Includes exclusive access to the Oceania exhibition throughout the day of the conference.
£45. Includes a complimentary ticket to the Oceania exhibition.
Oceania
Terms and conditions
About the speakers:
Director, Adam Art Gallery, Wellington, NZ
Christina Barton is a respected art historian, writer and curator with in-depth knowledge of New Zealand art especially post 1960. She has held curatorial positions at Auckland Art Gallery (1987-1992) and Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa (1992-1995) and academic positions at University of Auckland (1985-1987) and Victoria University (1995- ). She is Director of Adam Art Gallery Te Pātaka Toi at Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand, where she leads the exhibition programme, manages the University art collection and teaches in Art History. In 2015, she curated conceptual artist Billy Apple’s (born 1935) first retrospective at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, and is currently completing a monograph on the artist.
Keeper, Africa, Oceania and the Americas, British Museum, London, UK
Lissant Bolton is an anthropologist who specialises in the Pacific. Her research focuses on gender and kastom in Vanuatu, and on the indigenous use of collections and cultural knowledge. She has a specific interest in textiles, and has also written about issues relating to museums and indigenous communities. She works collaboratively with the Vanuatu Cultural Centre, supporting programmes to document and revive women’s knowledge and practice, and chairing the annual women fieldworker workshops. She is Head of the Africa, Oceania and the Americas Department at the British Museum, where she has curated a number of exhibitions such as Living and Dying (2003); Power and Taboo: Sacred Objects from the Pacific (2006) and Baskets and Belonging: Indigenous Australian Histories (2011). She has undertaken a series of major research projects, including Melanesian art: objects, narratives and indigenous owners with Nicholas Thomas and Engaging Objects: Indigenous Communities, museum collections and the representation of indigenous histories with the Australian National University and the National Museum of Australia.
Senior Lecturer in Art History, Victoria University, Wellington, NZ
Peter Brunt is Senior Lecturer in Art History at Victoria University of Wellington where he teaches Pacific art with a research focus on Oceanic modernism and contemporary art in the postwar era. He is co-curator of Oceania with Nicholas Thomas, with whom he also co-edited the multi-authored book, Art in Oceania: A New History, winner of the 2013 Author’s Club prize. He received his PhD from Cornell University and has published widely in journals, edited books and exhibition catalogues. Peter was born in New Zealand to migrant parents from Samoa and is of Samoan and English descent.
Director, Auckland War Memorial Museum, Auckland, NZ
Dr David Gaimster joined the Auckland Museum as CEO in April 2017. Previously David was Director of The Hunterian (2010-17), the largest university museums and galleries service in Scotland and the nation’s oldest museum, CEO of the Society of Antiquaries of London (2004-10), and Senior Policy Advisor, Department for Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS) (2002-04). Founded in the mid-nineteenth century, the Auckland Museum has particular strengths in world-leading Maori and Pacific collections and in the natural, documentary and visual arts heritage of New Zealand and the Pacific. The Museum is currently undergoing a major capital and digital transformation programme.
Artist, Solomon IS./AU
Taloi Havini is an interdisciplinary artist who works in ceramics, photography, video and mixed media installation. Her practice centres on the deconstruction of the politics of location, and the intergenerational transmission of Indigenous Knowledge Systems. She is actively involved in cultural heritage projects, solo and collaborative works, research and community projects across Melanesia and Australia. Her work is held in public and private collections including the Sharjah Art Foundation, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, National Gallery of Victoria, KADIST, San Francisco, CA, USA. She has exhibited in significant exhibitions including the Sharjah Biennial 13 (United Arab Emirates, 2017), 3rd Aichi Triennial: Homo Faber: A Rainbow Caravan (Nagoya, 2016), and the 8th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (Queensland Art Gallery | GoMA, Brisbane, 2015).
Interdisciplinary artist, Sāmoa
Yuki Kihara is an interdisciplinary artist whose work seeks to challenge dominant and singular historical narratives through visual arts, dance, and curatorial practice, engaging with Pacific colonial history and representation as they intersect with race, gender, spirituality, and sexual politics. The Metropolitan Museum of Art presented a solo exhibition of Kihara’s work entitled Living Photographs (2008), followed by an acquisition of her works for its permanent collection. Her works are also in the collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The British Museum and Te Papa Tongarewa Museum of New Zealand. Kihara’s works have been presented at Asia Pacific Triennial (2002, 2015), Auckland Triennial (2009), Sakahàn Quinquennial (2013), Daegu Photo Biennial (2014), Honolulu Biennial (2017) and Bangkok Art Biennial (2018). Kihara lives and works in Sāmoa.
Junior Curator Western New Guinea, National Museum of World Cultures, Leiden, NL
Erna Lilje grew up in Australia but was fortunate to have met her grandparents, in Papua New Guinea and Germany, as a child. In 2016 she moved to Cambridge to join a team led by Professor Nick Thomas, based at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. As a Research Associate on a major project focused on Pacific material culture held in European museums, Erna was enriched by the opportunity to connect with many scholars and Pacific cultural experts. Most recently, she has taken up the post of Junior Curator Papua and West Papua at the National Museum of World Cultures (Netherlands). Erna's engagement with material culture encompasses both museum-based research and an art practice, and is reflected by a degree in visual arts, Masters in Museum Studies, and PhD in Archaeology.
Senior Curator, Royal Academy of Arts, London, UK
Dr Adrian Locke completed an AHRC funded PhD on the art of colonial Peru at the University of Essex in 2001 and shortly afterwards joined the Royal Academy of Arts as a curator of temporary exhibitions. He has worked on a broad range of exhibitions including Aztecs; Turks: A Journey of a Thousand Years, 600-1600; Mexico: A Revolution in Art, 1910-1920; Anish Kapoor and Ai Weiwei. He curated The Art of Diplomacy: Brazilian Modernism Painted for War for Sala Brasil, the gallery of the Embassy of Brazil in London. He has published widely on the art of Latin America most recently contributing to the catalogue accompanying the exhibition Frida Kahlo Making Herself Up at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Adrian has been awarded the Ordem do Rio Branco for services to Brazilian culture. He is the co-curator of the exhibition Oceania, Royal Academy of Arts.
Artists, NZ
Mata Aho Collective (Ngati Toa Rangatira, Te Āti Awa ki Whakarongotai, Ngāti Awa, Tūhoe, Ngāti Ranginui, Ngāi Te Rangi, Rangitāne, Ngāti Kahungunu ki Wairarapa) produce large-scale works under a single collective authorship. Their work functions as an exploration into Māori world-views, portraying their shared and diverse experiences as Indigenous women. Established in 2012 by
Erena Baker, Sarah Hudson, Bridget Reweti and Terri Te Tau, their work, Kiko Moana (2017), was exhibited in documenta 14; Kaokao #1 (2014) was a finalist in the 2018 Asia Pacific, Singapore Art Prize; and their most recent work Tauira (2018) was commissioned for the Dowse Art Museum in Wellington.
Manager of the Pacific and International Collection, Australian Museum, Sydney, AU
Dr Michael Mel is from the Mogei community in the Central Highlands of Papua New Guinea and has presented at various conferences and written on the indigenous and contemporary art of Papua New Guinea. He is now a Manager of the Pacific and International Collections at the Australian Museum, Sydney.
Artist, NZ
Dr. Fiona Pardington MNZM, Chevalier de l'Ordre Française des Arts et des Lettres (b. 1961, of Māori [Kai Tahu, Kati Waewae and Ngāti Kahungunu]; Scottish [Clan Cameron of Erracht]; MacDonald and O'Niell descent. Her photography explores themes of memory, time, history, photographer and subject. By photographing taonga Māori (historical treasures), nature specimens and other museum artefacts, she revives their human and spiritual contexts, uniting postcolonial politics and reparative aesthetics. Pardington has a Doctorate in Fine Arts from Auckland University and has received several laureates, fellowships, residencies, awards and grants. She was made a Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters by France in 2016 and a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2017. In 2015 she was honoured with a 30 year survey exhibition which toured museums in three New Zealand cities. Her work has been included in many important international group exhibitions and biennials and is held in significant public collections including LACMA, Musée du Quai Branly, Paris, and the National Gallery of Canada. Her recent project Nabokov's Blues: The Charmed Circle, documents Vladimir Nabokov’s lepidoptery archives held in European and American museums and was launched at the inaugural Honolulu Biennial in 2017. Her major exhibitions include: A Beautiful Hesitation, profiling thirty years, City Gallery Wellington 2015, Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki and Christchurch Art Gallery 2016. International shows include Middle of Now|Here, Honolulu Biennial 2017; On the Origin of Art, MONA, 2017; lux et tenebris Momentum Worldwide, Berlin 2014; The Best of Times, The Worst of Times. Rebirth and Apocalypse in Contemporary Art, Ukraine Biennale Arsenale 2012; Ahua: A beautiful hesitation, 17th Biennale of Sydney, 2010. The New Zealand Government gifted a suite of her heitiki prints to the Museé du Quai Branly, 2008. Fiona is represented by Starkwhite, New Zealand.
Poet, novelist, artist, Niue/NZ
John Pule is a poet, novelist and artist born in Liku, Niue. His work explores the history, mythology and make-up of his country of origin, often in parallel with the experience of life and culture in New Zealand. His painting and poetry inform each other and narratives in his work span the historical, genealogical and autobiographical, weaving these elements together to raise questions about cultural belonging and the nature of storytelling. One of the Pacific’s most distinguished artists, Pule’s work has been represented in numerous international exhibitions. His published novels and poetry include The Shark that Ate the Sun, Burn My Head in Heaven, Sonnets to Van Gogh and The Bond of Time: An Epic Love Poem. Pule has held residencies in Rarotonga, Suva, Hawaii, Basel and Auckland and in 2012 was appointed an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services as an author, poet and painter.
Curator, Modern & Contemporary Māori & Indigenous Art, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Wellington, NZ
Megan Tamati-Quennell is the Curator of Modern and Contemporary Māori and Indigenous art at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. She began her curatorial career at the National Art Gallery in Wellington, New Zealand in 1990 and has worked in the field of modern and contemporary Māori art for around three decades. Megan is of Te Atiawa, Ngāti Mutunga and Kāti Mamoe, Ngai Tahu Māori descent. Her research interests include: Indigenous art curatorial praxis; Māori modernism and the work of the post WW2 Māori artists; Mana Wāhine Māori; Māori women artists of the 1970s/80s; the Māori Internationals; the urban avant-garde Māori artists of the 1990s and International Indigenous art with particular focus on First Nations art of Australia, Canada and the United States, which she has had some engagement with. Her forthcoming projects include exhibitions about the women of Māori modernism, about the works of Māori minimalist sculptor Matt Pine, as well as publications on Detour, by Michael Parekowhai, and a book chapter for the Multiple Modernisms project series (forthcoming from Duke University Press).
Director & Curator, Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge, UK
Professor Nicholas Thomas, who has been Director of MAA since 2006, is an anthropologist and historian. He visited the Pacific Islands first in 1984 to research his PhD thesis on the Marquesas Islands, he later worked in Fiji and New Zealand, as well as in many archives and museum collections in Europe, North America, and the Pacific itself. His books include Entangled Objects (1991); Oceanic Art (1995); Discoveries: the voyages of Captain Cook (2003); and Islanders: the Pacific in the Age of Empire (2010), which was awarded the Wolfson History Prize. He has collaborated with artists including painter John Pule and photographer Mark Adams on projects exploring cross-cultural art histories in the Pacific and curated exhibitions for many museums and art galleries in Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. He is currently a member of the Conseil d’Orientation Scientifique of the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris and the International Advisory Board of the Humboldt-Forum in Berlin.
Curator Mātauranga Māori, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, NZ
Matariki Williams (Tūhoe, Ngāti Hauiti, Taranaki, Ngāti Whakaue) is a Curator Mātauranga Māori at Te Papa, having previously worked at the Ministry for Culture and Heritage; Wellington Museum; Huia Publishers and Bridget Williams Books. She is also Editor - Kaupapa Māori at the Pantograph Punch, co-founder and co-editor of Tusk - Emergent Culture, and has guest edited at Radio New Zealand's The Wireless. Her writing has appeared in various print and online publications including The Spinoff, The Wireless, Pantograph Punch, Counterfutures Journal, New Zealand Books, The Sapling and Return Flight MEL > CHCH. She is a Kāhui Kaitiaki representative on the Museums Aotearoa Board, and Kaihautū Māori on the board of the National Digital Forum.
Curator Oceania, National Museum of World Cultures, Leiden, NL
Dr Fanny Wonu Veys is curator Oceania at the National Museum of World Cultures, the Netherlands. She has previously worked at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in Cambridge (UK) (2004–2006, 2008–2009) and has held postdoctoral fellowships at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York) (2006–2007) and at the Musée du Quai Branly (Paris) (2007–2008). She curated the Mana Māori exhibition (2010–2011) in Leiden and published a book with the same title. She co-curated the Australian Art exhibition with Dr. Georges Petitjean and a barkcloth exhibition Tapa, Étoffes cosmiques d’Océanie in Cahors (France) in 2009 with Laurent Guillaut. Her fieldwork sites include New Zealand (since 2000); Tonga (since 2003) and more recently Arnhem Land, Australia (since 2014). Her topics of interest and expertise include Pacific art and material culture, museums and cultures of collecting, Pacific musical instruments, Pacific textiles, and the significance of historical objects in a contemporary setting.
The Benjamin West Lecture Theatre
New for 2018, the lecture theatre builds on the RA’s heritage of rigorous and lively debate. This magnificent double-height space, with over 250 seats, allows us to share our artists and scholars with the world. Original clerestory windows provide a spectacular day-lit space, brought to life with a continuous programme of events including lectures, debates, film screenings and concerts.
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Our programme of short courses and classes offers the opportunity to explore a range of subjects, led by expert tutors and practising artists.
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