Pacific Arts: The Journal of the Pacific Arts Association

Guest edited by Anne E. Guernsey Allen

Guest Edited by Anne E. Guernsey Allen

This issue of Pacific Arts, which includes five contributions to a discussion roundtable, three articles, and one research note, is guest-edited by Anne E. Guernsey Allen. The discussion forum on “Art Education in Oceania” reflects Anne’s passion for, and dedication to, education.

Although a few scholars have examined the training of Indigenous Pacific artists during the period of early contact with Europeans and Americans, as well as the education of Indigenous artists who practice heritage arts in the Pacific today, almost nothing has been written on the instruction of art in modern classroom and workshop settings with regard to Pacific Islanders and Aboriginal Australians. The four Discussion Roundtable articles in this volume focus on teaching art in Oceania—three address art education for Pacific Island students in a variety of settings, while the fourth is concerned with the presentation of Pacific arts and artists to an outside audience made up of American college students. As a departure from the academic articles usually found in these pages, and in contrast to the other contributions to this volume, these four pieces are narratives of personal journeys of discovery.

This article traces the history and evolution of art education in independent Sāmoa from the perspective of personal experience, while also considering numerical data. It discusses art as a discipline taught in Sāmoan secondary schools and focuses on the development of the creative arts at the tertiary level. The essay reflects on the history and challenges of teaching visual art in Sāmoa, including successes and setbacks. Also considered are the struggles for students pursuing visual art as a career interest in Sāmoa. Examples of works of art created at the Leulumoega Fou School of Fine Arts are included, as are pieces by current National University of Sāmoa art students.

This paper presents experiences and personal reflections on teaching art in multicultural secondary schools in New Zealand for over forty years. An educational construct that puts students’ lived realities and cultural experiences at the forefront of their education—primarily through a process of respecting them and their communities—is presented by an art teacher whose career and practice have moved from a monocultural, Eurocentric system to a more equitable, diverse, student-based culture.

This paper looks at the role of artists and art instruction in New Caledonia, with particular emphasis on workshops used to teach traditional arts in a contemporary Pacific context. It articulates realistic insight into the life of Pacific artists and their work as and with tagata fenua (the Kanaky people of New Caledonia) and Polynesian participants from Uvea, Futuna, Tahiti, and other islands. Workshops at the Siapo Art Centre are designed to find ways to adapt the cultural environment to urban situations with the support of local associations, the government, and social agencies in order to develop long term initiatives. By focusing on the Kupesi Contemporary Artist in Residence program at the University of New Caledonia–Higher School of Teaching and Education (École Supérieure du Professorat et de l’Éducation, UNC ESPE) center, as well as other projects, this essay provides a window into the role of public art education in the Pacific.

This paper considers some of the pitfalls related to and practical considerations for teaching courses that address cultures to which the instructor does not belong. The primary focus, however, is on ethical matters that may arise in any university classroom, particularly in relation to the exhibition of art. Who, if anyone, has to right to speak for others and why do students assume it is the instructor? Whose voices or narratives are to be included? Who becomes the arbiter of authenticity in these cases? How do we counter stereotypes that arise when only a partial and filtered view of a culture can be presented?

Obituary for Donatus Moiwend, West Papuan artist.

In 1959, a serialised, illustrated encyclopaedia, The Book of Knowledge, published a photograph captioned “Fijian islanders preparing for a feast,” suggesting to readers that butchering a turtle prior to cooking was a common sight in the 1950s and a cultural practice among modern-day Fijians. However, the photograph had been taken around the turn of the century by a British colonial official, Basil Thomson, and published elsewhere by him and others in the intervening fifty years. How much post–World War II illustrative photography of Pacific Islanders in encyclopaedias was misleading in this manner? How much illustrative (particularly photographic) material from an era long past was presented mid-century as being evidence of contemporary life in the Pacific? Or, was preparing a turtle for a feast a long-standing tradition and, therefore, the date of the photograph immaterial? This paper investigates these questions within the context of the creation of The Book of Knowledge and other such compendia, as well as Euro-American stereotypes of Fiji and the Pacific.

This article considers a group of late nineteenth-century canoe carvings from Western Solomon Islands. They are so stylistically similar that they could have been carved by the same person, although that information is now lost. Functionally, the carvings’ imagery points to cultural parallels in a manner that gives them an operative efficacy, not just to the canoes to which they were lashed, but also to the vessels’ occupants and owners. This connectivity would have prevailed, not only during a war expedition when the canoes were in use, but before and after, when the carvings were put on and taken off the canoes. The carvings were likely stored in the houses of the canoe owners or in mortuary shrines, establishing a spatial-social cyclicity.

The unpublished work ARTventures: Art and Life in the Contemporary Pacific is a literary memoir recounting Susan Cochrane’s unorthodox life as a roaming curator of contemporary Pacific art. The narrative intertwines vignettes of the author’s personal life with her experiences as a “poken” (slang  for English-speaking foreigner) in New Caledonia; on fieldwork trips collecting art in remote areas of Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, and Vanuatu; and encountering Māori and Pasifika artists in Aotearoa New Zealand, and Aboriginal Taiwanese in Taiwan. The text is subtly layered with insights into the attitudes and operations of the art world and strategies to establish Indigenous art in its own right.

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