Papua New Guinean art

Papua New Guinean art has a rich and diverse tradition. In particular, it is world-famous for carved wooden sculpture: masks, canoes, story-boards. Many of the best collections of these are held in overseas museums.

Some of the artists regarded as being in the first wave of contemporary art in Papua New Guinea are: Mathias Kauage OBE (born 1944), Timothy Akis, Jakupa Ako and Joe Nalo, all from the tough urban area of Port Moresby. Kauage won Australia's Blake Prize for Religious Art, four of his works are in the Glasgow Museum of Modern Art, and he had a solo show in 2005 at the Horniman Museum, "Kauage's Visions: Art from Papua New Guinea". Other noted Papua New Guinean visual artists include Larry Santana, Martin Morububuna and Heso Kiwi.

The works shown below, in composite images, were done while the artists were visiting California but are traditional in content and medium. See http://www.stanford.edu/~mjpeters/png/.

• 
  A male spirit dance mask from Kabriman Village, Blackwater River Basin, East Sepik Province, 1960-1973. In the collection of The Children's Museum of Indianapolis
• 
  Carved tree trunks, Stanford sculpture garden.
• Views of wooden sculpture by Yesu Minja and Nanqui Nokwi, Membor Apokiom and Naui Saunambui, from Bangwis village, Kwoma, sponsored by Bonnie Brae, Stanford University.
  Views of wooden sculpture by Yesu Minja and Nanqui Nokwi, Membor Apokiom and Naui Saunambui, from Bangwis village, Kwoma, sponsored by Bonnie Brae, Stanford University.
• A Papua New Guinean wooden sculpture. Stanford University New Guinea sculpture garden.
  A Papua New Guinean wooden sculpture. Stanford University New Guinea sculpture garden.

The Nouméa Biennale (an art fair in New Caledonia) includes works from Papua New Guinea.

See also

• Culture of Papua New Guinea
• Sepik art
• Melanesian art