Pasifika Styles
Artists inside the museum

Edited by Rosanna Raymond & Amiria Salmond (editors)

Key Points

• Documents an exhibition by 15 NZ artists in the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge, UK, from 2006–2008.
• Shows contemporary artists working alongside the world’s best collection of Oceanic art from the 18th century.
• Profusely illustrated in full colour.
• Co-published with Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge

Pasifika Styles is about a groundbreaking experiment in the display of contemporary Pacific art. The artists flung open the stores of the museum and installed their works in cases next to taonga collected on the voyages of Cook and Vancouver. This heralds a new era of collaborative curatorship in ethnographic museums.

For two years, visiting artists (including Ani O’Neill, Maureen Lander, Shigeyuki Kihara, Tracey Tawhiao, Reuben Paterson, Rachel Rakena, Lisa Reihana, Lisa Taouma, Michel Tuffery) brought vitality to the collections by offering workshops, seminars, public activities and a festival of performing arts. This book describes the making of Pasifika Styles from the perspectives of the artists and the museum professionals and scholars involved, placing it in the midst of current debates about museums, cultural property and art.

Contents

Preface Nicholas Thomas
1 Introduction: Islands of Opportunity
3 An Interview with Lisa Taouma
4 Pasifika Styles
5 He Tautoko
6 Relational Understandings
7 Fieldwork in a Glass Case
8 Fusion/Confusion
9 Some Anxious Moments
10 Visiting Artists Programme
11 Tikanga Maori and Art
12 Awakening Sleeping Objects
13 Korero Mai
14 Dad’s Chair
15 A Visual Essay
Glossary
Bibliography

Editors

Rosanna Raymond is an artist, performer and freelance curator who helped to establish the Pasifika Festival in Auckland. Now based in London, she has created exhibitions at a variety of UK venues and undertaken residencies in Britain, the US and France.
Amiria Salmond is a curator and lecturer at the University of Cambridge. She has produced exhibitions at the Tairawhiti Museum in New Zealand, and studies and practises Maori weaving. Her book Museums, Anthropology and Imperial Exchange has been published by Cambridge University Press and a co-edited volume, Thinking through things: theorising artefacts ethnographically, has recently been published by Routledge.

Book details
Art, Anthropology
paperback, 210 x 210 mm, 160 pp , colour throughout
ISBN 978 1 877372 60 5, $49.99 / £19.50 UK
Publication: May 2008

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