THE opening of the Australian National Gallery’s “Myth + Magic, Art of the Sepik River” is not so much a float down the river as an immersion in the art and artefacts of the villagers and the villages of an immense area that we really don’t know enough about.
And as it’s incumbent upon the director of the NGA to spruik the catalogue of the current exhibition. Gerard Vaughan did that with aplomb and I’ll happily endorse his effort as it’s a wonderful collection of photographs from early last century as well as a catalogue of the exhibition display.
Among the photographs is the most beautiful initiation body art of the “trapunto” needlework kind. For sewers, that’s the stuffing of small pockets between two fabric pieces to create a pattern. To explain the technique we had a rip-off-his-shirt moment from the director of the PNG National Museum and Art Gallery, Dr Andrew Moutu, happy to show us his crocodile-patterned shoulder and back, and set a new benchmark for gallery directors.
Having lived in PNG and collected all manner of artefacts, to experience this exhibition is to again delve into the history and the unique art of the Sepik.
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