96 Opening in August at the National Gallery of Australia, Myth & Magic: Art of the Sepik River, Papua New Guinea will be a singular opportunity to experience eighty-fi ve masterpieces from the middle and lower Sepik River region, the majority of which have been lying dormant for many decades in museum storerooms across Australia. The focus of the exhibition is fi rmly on the visually impressive and the culturally signifi cant, rather than on any attempt at being ethnographically representative or typologically encyclopedic. It will feature ancestral fi gures, masks, orator stools, ceremonial house posts, and other important works selected from the vast collections of Museum Victoria and the Ian Potter Museum of Art in Melbourne; the South Australian Museum in Adelaide; the Western Australian Museum in Perth; the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery in Tasmania; the Queensland Museum and Queensland University’s Museum of Anthropology, both in Brisbane; the Art Gallery of New South Wales and the Australian Museum of Sydney; and the National Museum of Australia in Canberra. If you’re looking for a reason to visit Australia, this one-time gathering of remarkable sculptures is an excellent one. The exhibition will focus on marvels from the Murik Lakes, the Keram River, the Yuat River, the Korewori River, and the well-known cultures of the Iatmul and Sawos. While these long-hidden-away artifacts eloquently represent the cultures that produced them, they also reveal something about the “eye” of each fi eld ART on view Myth & Magic, Art of the Sepik River Masterpieces in Australian Collections By Crispin Howarth FIG. 1: Ancestor fi gure, nimbero kandimbong. Murik Lakes, East Sepik Province, Papua New Guinea. 19th century. Collected by P. Ledoux in 1935. Wood, bark cloth, fi ber, ocher, hair. H: 100 cm. Australian Museum, E84779. Photo: Stuart Humphreys. The topknot on this fi gure depicts a coiffure where a man shaved his hair back from the forehead and a fi ber coif is worn. The nose shows studs upon the nostrils, and this tradition of nose piercing refers to the mythical ancestors Andena and Dibadiba, who shared their knowledge of carving magic so kandimbong fi gures could hold ancestral spirits. Other common visual traits are the simplifi cation of the arms in preference for an emphasis on the strong legs with sloping feet never intended to support the fi gure, which instead would have been hung from the wall of a private house.
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