FEATURE 98 TWO KINDS OF HOOK CARVINGS According to Newton,10 the word garra is a collective term for all Bahinemo sacred objects with a magico-religious function, including the hook carvings and the large slit drums. They have also been recorded as grababufa, guah, and gra, depending on the source literature. These variations may refl ect dialect differences. A consistent element in garra hook carvings is the opposing hooks that point toward the center of the object. Unlike the yipwon fi gures of the Yimam (fi g. 5) and the aripa fi gures of the Inyai- Ewa people to the east (fi g. 4), garra usually do not have an anthropomorphic head and never have a leg. However, at one end there is usually a hole or lug used to suspend the object in the men’s house, and this indicates its orientation. There are two broad categories of garra hook fi gures: an almost two-dimensional form, seemingly intended to be viewed in profi le, and a more three-dimensional form, seemingly intended to be viewed frontally. Although the fi rst kind exists in larger numbers, there is only one example in the collection of the National Gallery of Australia (fi g. 6). This hook was acquired in February 1969 by the artist Sir William Dargie from Wayne Heathcote at Ambunti on the Sepik River. It was recorded as “Namur hook,” which suggests it was collected at Namu village located on a tributary of the Salumei River and may be called a garra since Namu is a Bahinemo village. Barry Craig recorded the name alekei for this kind of carving made by the Sanio people of Bekapeki on the middle April River (fi g. 11).11 The second kind of garra is commonly known as a “mask” garra, though this is an inaccurate description since no reliable information indicates that they were ever used as masks. These usually take the form of a relatively wide, ovalshaped concave board with a centrally placed face that can be as minimal as a pair of tubular eyes, sometimes pierced through, which is set amid a vertical line of concentric hooks. Sometimes there is a painted or cut-through mouth (fi gs. 3, 9, 13, 14, 16, and 19). Perhaps the most famous “mask” garra appears on the cover of Goldman’s Hunstein Korowori and is one of a few known examples that are fl at board with a vertical line of concentric hooks that bisects a clearly articulated face with tubular eyes and
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