89 often obscuring the original associations and context of an artwork. I decided to escape from the clutter and nonsense of attributions and went back to the eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century explorer log books, missionary journals, archaeologist reports, and other publications that documented early interactions between people and art objects. This was better, but after a while I felt the need to focus on the art objects themselves, rather than on what other Westerners had written about them, so I made an appointment at the British Museum. Eventually I was introduced to Jill Hasell, who in turn introduced me to the wood figures—the atua—of central Polynesia, bringing them to me on a trolley, one by one. I was privileged to have around ten minutes with each of these Polynesian god figures, the few “heathen idols” that had escaped destruction in the iconoclasm that swept throughout Polynesia in the early nineteenth century. They had not been tampered with since they were lodged in the BM’s collection around 100 years ago. I gently sniffed the two-hundred-year-old dust in the cracks in the wood (it was respectful sniffing, you can be assured). To my surprise, the smell of each figure was as unique as its visual appearance. It was a sunny autumn day, and a soft light was streaming through the storage windows, illuminating the BM’s great Rarotongan male figure as a masterpiece of serenity. I half expected one of these old gods to let me know that it was still there, but nothing showed itself. The more the exhibition developed, the more I felt the need to work with a Polynesian colleague. Vairea Teissier at the Musée de Tahiti made me understand that she wanted the “view from the interior.” This was not going to be easy, since I was not Polynesian. At the time I did not understand that I was already working with a Polynesian colleague as my main partner in this project—a Tahitian atua who was at least 200 years old. My relationship with this atua had started when I began to visit the Bishop Museum in Honolulu in 2004. I wanted to find out more about the story behind each Polynesian work of art and the Bishop was the obvious place to begin. Its records had been developing for well more than a century through generations of scholars and curators. Betty Kam granted me access to the files and DeSoto Brown and his team helped me with the archives. I settled in swiftly, knowing I had only a few days to understand a huge amount of information. Taking a break, I went down to the Polynesian gallery, where I found an old Tahitian male figure carved in wood (fig. 13). I liked the look of him and photographed him from a number of angles. The next year I returned to the Bishop Museum and al- POLYNESIAN GODS facing page, installation views, clockwise from top FIG. 6: Akamata (left) was created in 2004 and Taputu (right) in 2001, both by Eruera Nia, Taputapuatea, Rarotonga, Cook Islands, central Polynesia. National Gallery of Australia, 2010.1182 & 2010.1183. Photo: Barry Le Lievre, National Gallery of Australia. FIG. 7: Detail of a figure called Maee, positioned standing on hands and toes with head thrown back in a scream. Collected at Hale o Keawe by Lord George Anson Byron, 1825. Hawai’i, northern Polynesia. Probably 18th century or earlier. British Museum, London, Oc.1657. Photo: Barry Le Lievre, National Gallery of Australia. FIG. 8: Male ancestor figure riding the deck of a canoe/penis. Marquesas Islands, central Polynesia. Probably 18th century or earlier. Musée d’Ethnographie, Genève. 8937. Photo: Barry Le Lievre, National Gallery of Australia. FIG. 9: Two figures made from barkcloth (tapa) over armatures made from cane. Rapa Nui (Easter Island), eastern Polynesia. Probably late 18th or early 19th century. Left: Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 70/53542. Right: National Museums of Northern Ireland, Belfast, 1910.41. Photo: Barry Le Lievre, National Gallery of Australia. FIG. 10 (top right): Fisherman’s god, oramatua. Rarotonga, Cook Islands, central Polynesia. 18th or early 19th century. Wood. H: 42 cm. Staatliches Museum für Völkerkunde, Munich. Photo: Marietta Weidner. FIG. 11 (bottom right): Fisherman’s god, oramatua. Rarotonga, Cook Islands, central Polynesia. Late 18th–early 19th century. Wood, black paint. H: 33 cm. British Museum, London. Photo © The Trustees of the British Museum. All rights reserved.
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