October | 2013 | Martin Fowler

Just because this surprise visit was just that, a surprise showing of a whole integrated new range of cultural production, from an unexpected area (previously unpublicised, forgotten?) this has been an opportunity to introduce the PNG cultural material in a relatively inclusive way.

We can see this in material from other areas later, but for now here is some of the other material culture from Samgik that adds a bit more scope to the art featured in the previous post.

The first image shows bilums made by the women hanging off the various figures and totems of the carved lintel, ‘ticket’, of the haus tambaran at Samgik in August 2013. Obviously here, and as they are in the neighbouring Abelam cultures bilums like these are integral to the traditions, and origin legends of the Wama and their affiliated cultures.

Art on Yams

July-August is the time for yam festivals in the Abelam and other areas around Maprik. The main harvest is over and some of the prize yams are starting to shoot, so those are ready to contribute their offshoots to the new season. Prize yams are cultivated by their skilled initiated male growers to be big (almost person height) and to attain anthropomorphic shapes and are decorated appropriately for display at the festival, which has the added edge of a fertility rite atmosphere to start the new season’s plantings.

The prize yams here are shown standing in front of the haus tambaran, the usual backdrop for the festival ceremonies. At Brikiti the next day another display of yams had them laid horizontal with their headrests upright behind them. A week earlier there had been a yam festival at Milak, a village to the north of Brikiti and I had seen guys there decorating some that lay horizontal the day before the festivities. Villages that maintain some affiliation arrangements with each other around the Maprik district attend each others’ festivals, and exchanges take place as well.

Bilums

The bilums displayed on the Guest House at Samgik were made by women of the Wama cultural group and were very fine examples of these usually exquisitely designed, and well crafted works of art. The ones on the facades here are made in the plant fibre and natural dye traditional, for which the Maprik area was once very famous.

Bilums can be seen as purely utilitarian objects, but to look at them that way is to miss the point that here is displayed high aesthetic sensibility. These objects certainly are rugged and can carry objects well, but they also carry strong symbolic and ritual meanings, even to the point where they often codify the identity and ples of their makers.

Obviously for the Wama at Samgik, and certainly for the Abelam (and for the Kwoma in slightly different ways) the bilum is highly symbolic and is integral to key origin stories. Bilums feature on Abelam haus tambaran facade artwork as, what can appear to outsiders, as abstract infil decoration. But they are not included on these current Samgik facade panels. Nevertheless, bilums are displayed on the skirts to the facades here in much the same way as they are on Abelam haus tambaran fronts for events like openings and special occasions.

If you want a really good reference book with thorough explanations and including great images and even beautiful drawings of the techniques of looping involved see : Maureen MacKenzie. Androgynous Objects: string bags and gender in central New Guinea, Harwood Academic, 1991.

Pottery

The women of the Abelam, the neighbouring Wosera and other surrounding groups made pottery some of which was decorated by men who incised and painted colourful traditional images with figures and totems. The ones shown are plain forms with only surface decoration. Reputed to have died for many years, pottery seems to be making a come back from the Kwoma to some areas around Maprik. It is refreshing to see that women are keen now to have their art skills revived, and made available to the market again.

Kundu drums

This is a hand held drum made out of light wood with a snake or lizard skin membrane stretched taut to form the sounding surface which is fixed to one end. That is treated with a beeswax type resin which helps in producing a distinct resonating timbre by making parts of the acoustic skin sticky to the touch. The kundu shown here is a special, patterned, relatively solid and elaborately decorated example.

Dance and Body Art

For the performances we saw at Samgik there was mostly decorative apparel and apparatus rather than face painting applied to the dancers. Here we see skirts, arm, and ankle bands, kinds and bilums. The detail image show decorated dancing sticks carried and danced with by the women.

Art on Architecture

Samgik follows a pattern somewhere formally between their northern and eastern Abelam neighbours and their western Ilahita ones. I will look at the architecture itself later and make comparisons across groups, and hopefully across time. This is just a visual introduction to these graphic related large objects that are a cultural focus in may ways. They act as a stage and backdrop as we see in the way the dances were performed here on our visit. Normally the sort of art seen in the Wama Guest House, or its more tradition and sometimes secret versions are housed within, and in turn host initiation ceremonies. And before the initiation of festival the interior functions as a workshop-studio for the production of the artworks (the facade panels and its lintel, the sculptures and interior painted panels, maybe material for yam festivities, and so on.)

Hopefully this entry helps give an indication of the comprehensive nature of the art production proudly put on show by the associated culture groups represented at Samgik in mid 2013.

Wama Guest House

The guest house is a hybrid form with a more secular, a modern function, rather than that seen in the traditional haus tambaran. The form again is an interpretative representation of a bird form with the wings extended maybe like a hen sheltering its chicks. The head is the peak with the conical cap. Similar shaped forms housing stage/rostrum functions were seen at Ilahita in the important sacred places which are still communal gathering spaces where public meetings are held and announcements made. At Samgik this building came before the haus tambaran. It seems to me to have elements that may have been a bit of trail run before embarking on the much higher stake venture that the haus tambaran represents.

Samgik Haus Tambaran

We will look at the haus tambaran in more detail, and across cultures and time in a future entries. But here is a glimpse of the house as an object, and its painted art in detail. Part of the painted panel is here and the lintel detail is above.

Viewed early August 2013

The collection of art that we saw displayed at Samgik was quite different to most of the art of the Maprik area seen in published sources, and in real objects in various collections. The images here have been enhanced to correct problems due to very compromised light conditions and time constraints.

The culture and language groups are listed below, as far as we were told. There was too much happening and too little time to collect any of the stories associated with the works, or even to get the artists names and details.

Nevertheless, what you can see is that the most of the sculptures look like ancestor figures, male and female. There are also many smaller carved animals and birds, and an impressive snake. These appear to be clan totems and some are attached to the tall carved figures.

The images do show a very unusual art style, or representation tradition. This material is stylistically quite unusual compared to that of their famous neighbours to the north and east the Abelam. It is different again to published Wosera material to their south. And it also differs overall to the material of the Ilahita Arapesh to the west, whose work is represented with material from a Sunuhu haus tambaran (neighbours to the west of Ilahita) collected in the late 1970s by F Gerretts and held in the National Museum and Art Gallery (NMAG) in Port Moresby. There is, however, some similarity with some Ilahita art, and notably there is a new inverted heart shaped piece that was obviously done recently in concert with artists making new work at Ilahita for display at the joint Brikiti – Ilahita festival held on the 9th August 2013. More on that later. In the art on the haus tambaran front there is clear similarity to the art of the Abelam of Brikiti and Apengai.

The material in the entry room collection is more public objects, some is prosaic, and the group of objects is quite varied, indicating maybe a few different artists. The work in the inner room was generally stronger in its sense of presence, and more pieces were bigger, and the same hand or hands was evident in groups of objects.

Most of the carved and ‘painted’ timber pieces were coloured with ochres or what looked like chalk, charcoal and pastels, including some touches of pale blue, aqua and lemon. The expressions on the faces and the detail of figures looks naive at first on some, but at a second glance has power and character.

So the art here was a surprise on a number of levels. There may well be other sources and earlier collections from this culture area that maybe known in material held overseas. But, if so they must be more obscure than is the case for the Abelam, Wosera and Arapesh. The arts here seem also to be undergoing a revival of interest and skill development and pride in their cultural distinctiveness, again in spite of majority disparagement or hostility —at least that is what has been inferred. But, time and research needs to be invested to get a proper and reliable account of the cultural change issues here. Here and for most of the Maprik and surrounds!

It looks to me like this could be a new wave of art manifesting at Samgik, celebrating and telling traditional stories, but with enough remove from strict training to be exploratory, and to have a refreshing informal vitality.

———-

Now here are a few details given to us on the 8th August 2013 :

There was an opening of Wama Guest House, SAMGIK, 12th June 2012 by MP John Simon.

These guys met us and took us around — Beni Dua, Daniel Malken, Jurex Guralangu, Lawrence Francis. The big man with the Culture group badge etc was Lawrence Yupi.

The two who won best Yam prizes: Linson Toby and Jesse Kamblapi who come from the BkM culture group and the BAL clan. I think it was their group who danced at the haus tambaran.

DANCE GROUPS at SAMGIK They danced as we arrived at the Guest House
1 BAL culture group— I think they also performed in front of the haus tambaran
2 NINGALIMBI did the dance with the log
3 WAMA culture group big man culture rep – Lawrence Yupi

EXCHANGE GROUPS linked to Samgik KAMU language group. SAMGIK, NINDIGO, SARAGAKUM, NINGALIMBI (3) *same language group – Ilahita Arapesh, LAINGA*, KATNIKUM, GWELIGUM, NERIKUM

ART for SALE

In the rooms inside the Wama Guest House at Samgik we were told this information :
Closed room : All men’s house stuff (no women of the area can come in here) : the whole collection of big figures etc for sale PGK 40,000
Entry room : all the stuff PGK 30,000

Wama culture bilums were on display and for sale at the Wama guest house.
Dance groups can be hired to perform.

Martin Fowler

architect, researcher & consultant specialising in Melanesian art, architecture and culture

Monthly Archives: October 2013

Other Samgik Visual Arts