Ritual Art at the Source: Malagan on Tabar Island, New Ireland, Papua New Guinea by Michael Gunn

Ritual Art at the Source: Malagan on Tabar Island, New Ireland, Papua New Guinea
By Michael Gunn

Michael Gunn, today PAA President, was one of those scholars who were seduced by the almost irresistible urge to interpret the symbolism found on malagan artworks from northern New Ireland. After several years of preliminary research in museums in the West, he traveled to the Tabar Islands, legendary source of the malagan ritual that resulted in the creation of many of these masks and painted wooden figures. He had anticipated that this work would be a form of ethnohistory – asking the old men about a tradition long dead, more an exercise in the effects of memory upon the re-creation of culture. But to his surprise Gunn found that malagan was still alive and actively practiced by the 2500 people living on Tabar in 1982.

In addition to providing a description and analysis of the malagan artproducing ritual traditions as practiced on Tabar in the late 20th century, based on Gunn's visit to every village here he located each of the owners of the malagan art-producing ritual and asked which part of the ritual he/she owned, this book also includes a number of photographs of malagan figures and masks, as well as other objects of material culture that were collected from the Tabar Islands during the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Crawford House Publishing Australia, 2010
336 pages, color and black and white illustrations
ISBN 1863332359
www.crawfordhouse.com.au