Book review

Art and Artists of Oceania Edited by Sidney M. Mead and Bernie Kernot
Published by The Dunmore Press, Palmerston North, 1983

Reviewed by PAT HOHEPA

This is a unique and valuable book which makes a considerable leap from being merely another scholarly treatise on Oceanic Art to giving one an appreciation of its diversity. It is a book meant for analysts and anthropological scholars but the choice of articles and writers, and the inclusion of copious photographs of artwork, artists and their environments enables the reader to gain an insider's view of Oceanic Art and artists.

Oceania is immense, covering just under half the globe. There is diversity and there are tensions with in each society just as there is between the traditional isolated worlds of the past and the global village of this century. The various papers exemplify all these in a glorious way.

One conclusion is inescapable: if you were born in Oceania either with genealogical roots of a millenium or more, or if you are an artist, writer, student or have more than a passing interest in Oceanic peoples and their art, this book is essential. It goes beyond the level required by the pretentious or the dilettante. It is written by people with a passionate interest in either the art of Oceanic peoples or because they themselves are of that group.

The raison d'être of this publication is not in its origins. There were eighteen papers selected from some thirty delivered at the second international symposium on the Arts of Oceania held at Victoria University in 1978. That conference was sufficiently diverse to ensure that the papers had no unifying thematic approach except for the many facets of art in Oceania. That the publication of these papers took five years is par for the course and not of any great moment: those chosen will not age rapidly. More than that, the whole gamut from art as a vivid part of village life to the joys of Tokelauan cuisine, and from colonialism shattering the world of traditional artists to the relegation of women artists in Polynesia and Melanesia to the craft arena through the seemingly tapu nature of art... all provide fascinating glimpses of the diverse milieu of Oceania.