Paperskin: barkcloth across the Pacific - Queensland Art Gallery

Preface
Nicholas Thomas
since the eighteenth century, the barkcloth of the Pacific has intrigued travellers and
captured the attention of connoisseurs in europe. From the 1770s, the decoration of
Tongan ngatu, hawaiian kapa and other fabrics sparked the interest of collectors, and
soon after Cook’s voyages, sheets of barkcloth began to be cut up for distribution
among albums of samples. it was briefly the fashion for london ladies to adapt their
garments, incorporating tapa, which has thus been a cross-cultural fabric for nearly
250 years.
if, early on, barkcloth spoke eloquently of the exotic, it is strange that it has only recently
been seriously studied, and only recently recognised as a major Oceanic art form. Though
there are brief reports and discussions scattered through many early anthropological
monographs, it was only in 1972 that a book dedicated to tapa in Polynesia (by simon
Kooijman, a Dutch anthropologist) was published, and still more recently that a book (Neich
and Pendergrast’s 1997 Pacific Tapa) with colour plates appeared, that could be said to do
justice to the aesthetics of the medium. There are, of course, explanations for this neglect.
Tribal art studies and art markets have long been biased toward sculptural forms
and toward works of art made by men, while fabrics have been neglected. equally
unfortunate was the perception that patterned and painted cloth is merely ‘decorated’,
and decoration, perceived as a lower-order, sub-artistic level of cultural creativity. until
recently, these fabrics were seen as bearers of patterns rather than works of art, and
were typically exhibited as backdrops in museum display cases rather than presented
as objects that could be appreciated for their integral value.
No major art exhibition has been dedicated to barkcloth until now. ‘Paperskin’ is a
landmark project that brings into view a stunning selection of fabrics, primarily from the
rich but largely un-researched collections of Te Papa and the Queensland Museum.
some of these — the samoan, hawaiian and Fijian examples — will be familiar to those
who already have an interest in the genre. but some, such as the animated Niuean
Hiapo (detail) 19th century
Niue (attributed)
Barkcloth, dye / 105 x 171.5cm /
Collection: Museum of New
Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa
hiapo example, are extraordinary and unlike any other Niuean piece in any collection,
anywhere in the world. Hiapo such as these remind us that they are not examples of
an object type but unique works of art. At the same time, barkcloths are not solely, or
not exactly, works of art: the terminological debate is ultimately unproductive, but it is
important to remember that these were not made for aesthetic appreciation in a narrow
sense, but rather to constitute sanctity, to define a ceremony, to wrap around a body,
to bear knowledge or to effect a gift. These art forms were embedded in the lives of
Pacific islanders and in many places, and in many ways, they still are.
The curators are to be congratulated on a sparkling and singular exhibition which may
be the first but should definitely not be the last. let us hope that it encourages islanders,
artists, students, curators and other interested people to look again, and more intently, at
the barkcloth of the Pacific.
Nicholas Thomas is Director of the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology and Professor of historical
Anthropology, Cambridge university.
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