Te Tapa

By Mark Amery

Word of mouth remains the world’s most powerful PR, and I can’t recall hearing stronger or more diverse in my ear than for Paperskin: The Art of Tapa Cloth, currently on show at Te Papa.

Word of mouth is also usually most reliable, and Paperskin contains revelation after revelation - Te Papa this winter has earned the nickname Te Tapa. A partnership between the Queensland Art Gallery, Queensland Museum and Te Papa, and first shown in Brisbane, the exhibition feels refreshingly old-fashioned next to the whistles, bells and lights contained in a typical headlining Te Papa show.

Paperskin is a significant bringing together of the Pacific, marrying Polynesia and Melanesia, and representing distinct traditions everywhere from Eddystone Island Futuna to the many different peoples of Papua New Guinea. Tapa or patterned barkskin cloth and masks selected from the collections of the three institutions and one private Australian collector are well-hung in the museum’s Tower Gallery.

Tapa has become increasingly familiar in New Zealand homes and life. Yet this doesn’t prepare you for the mesmeric glories of the finest examples, or for the immense variety of the designs and colours beyond the Tongan and Western Samoan work we are most familiar with.

Particularly revelatory is the work from Papua New Guinea drawn from Australian collections. These are both historical and from named contemporary barkcloth artists. Vivian Marumi’s ‘Odunege 1 (Jungle vines 1)’ from 2006 for example buzzes with nature’s sexual energy, bringing natural male and female forms together with lightning zig-zags and hot spots, and is as timeless as the older work here.

For contemporary art the revelation is the shimmering strength of the geometric abstraction and manifold approaches to it across the Pacific. These precede and then run parallel to Western modernism. In New Zealand Gordon Walters took inspiration from Melanesian grid patterns, and the likes of the work of Richard Killeen and Allen Maddox show tapa’s influence, yet we’ve tended to principally align their work with Western traditions.

These Pacific artists work to energise the entire field of their composition often through complex internal interactions between panels. With nary a straight line to be found, the Papua New Guinean work can crackle with magic in the dynamic cross and arrow movement of wavering tones and patterns in different directions. You can see how such animation might have inspired the early moving image work of Len Lye.

Equally the tapa can show the influence of Western interaction in the fluidity of shifts in design. A Siapo mamanu from 1930s American Samoa is full of the elegant overlapping circular and diamond shapes of art deco. Here as in some of the Melanesian work in the show the tapa reminds me greatly of the abstraction of Moroccan Berber carpets, whose alignment to abstract modernism started to be recognised by the art world in the 1930s.

Animators and cartoonists should also pay attention. The fantastical masks of Papua New Guinea provide a masterclass in human expression through line drawing and sculpture, and again echo and precede our Western modern cartooning tradition. They reminded me of the fanciful inspired bulbous shapes of local contemporary painters Mark Braunias and Matthew Browne.

Some of these masks - the tradition of which has recently been revived – are connected to bodies that incredibly spire up into decorated tubular bodies some ten feet into the air. Their elevation of the spirit contrasted for me with the lifelessness of the colossal squid lying in state downstairs.

Given the inclusion of contemporary Papua New Guinean work it seems strange that the exhibition does not include, or at least make strong connections, to the Nuiean Siapo-inspired work of John Pule and the excellent survey exhibition Hauaga at City Gallery. This was a cultural opportunity missed - to draw the museum artefact and contemporary artwork together, as has been done upstairs for Maori art in Toi Te Papa.

The 19th century Nuiean Siapo here is distinguished by the tiny pixellated intensity of its loose and expressive forms. In one example there are small cellular like building blocks, that could be reptilian, botanical or human. In another an extraordinarily complex strata of changing chequerboard patterns, billowing frond shapes and zig zags create one enormous visual cryptic crossword.

It’s a shame tapa couldn’t have been allowed to have physical life by being hung loosely in the air rather than stapled to the walls. Conservation issues may have prevented this. One less excusable gripe however is the absence of the splendid catalogue in book form. Whilst available to peruse digitally in the gallery and online at the Te Papa website, for such a significant exhibition this seems ridiculous skimping, and a commercial opportunity lost. I can’t get as up close to these intricate patterns online through the digital pixellation as I’d like.

It’s testament to the strength of the exhibition that I wanted to take these works home with me within the paperskin of a book’s pages.

Paperskin: The Art of Tapa Cloth, Te Papa, until 12 September