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- Convenors:
-
Elizabeth Bonshek
(British Museum)
Lindy Allen (University of Queensland)
Send message to Convenors
- Formats:
- Panels
- Location:
- Hancock Library, room 2.22
- Sessions:
- Wednesday 4 December, -, -
Time zone: Australia/Sydney
Short Abstract:
The panel explores the various ways in which value is expressed through objects and the diverse ways objects have been explored in terms of their materiality, their artistic or expressive power using anthropological methodologies.
Long Abstract:
This panel explores the various ways in which value is expressed through objects and the diverse ways objects have been explored in terms of their materiality, their artistic or expressive power. Our aim is to demonstrate the value of anthropology in creating broader cross-cultural understandings pertaining to contemporary production, consumption and creative expression, as well as to legacy collections in museums or private collections or elsewhere, and of the concurrence of knowledge and thought that moves beyond expressions of cultural identity.
Through analyses of distribution, connection, transmission and the development of objects in both the past and the present, anthropological approaches assist our understandings of how the world has come to be the way it is: the myriad effects of globalization on the use and production of objects; the repercussions of climate change on their production; and efforts that draw upon objects new and old to maintain and strengthen cultural practices to affect change in the future. What are the social, economic and/or symbolic values that drive people to make, create, preserve or destroy cultural objects?
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Tuesday 3 December, 2019, -Diane Losche (University of New South Wales)
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores the changing values attached to Abelam objects from Papua New Guinea, which have been collected and represented for over a century, In particular the paper will examine which theories of value assist us in understanding these transformations.
Paper long abstract:
Since the early twentieth century Abelam objects from Papua New Guinea have been highly valued as a major indigenous art form. Highly valued in terms of visual impact and complex cultural context, these objects have not only been widely collected but also the subject of significant ethnographic study. Methods of collection and representation have changed during this period, as has the Abelam area itself, with dramatic transformations in the cultural system that produced the objects. While there has been a significant reduction in the architecture and objects produced over this time, the period has also seen Abelam artists included in international art events, such as the Asia-Pacific Triennial of Art, in Brisbane, 2012.
This long and complex history of collection and representation presents an opportunity to explore the notion of value as applied to Abelam objects in a variety of contexts and in transformation through time. This paper will chart the different ways that collection has taken place from the early period through to the Asia-Pacific Triennial, as well as changing modes of representation in exhibition. Through this examination the paper will seek to unravel what kinds of value were attached to these objects in different contexts and will also investigate whether different theories of value are useful, or not, in understanding these transformations.
Jasmin Guenther (James Cook University/Aarhus University)
Paper short abstract:
With a focus on eighteenth century Polynesian artefacts from the HMS Pandora collection (Museum of Tropical Queensland) and drawing on long-term research in Tahiti, the paper explores the value of the past in the present and highlights the importance of continuous acts of making.
Paper long abstract:
Failing to find safe passage through the Great Barrier Reef, HMS Pandora sank in 1791 after a five-month search through Oceania for the mutineers of the Bounty. 186 years later, the wreck was discovered and objects from the site eventually made their way into the Museum of Tropical Queensland in Townsville. Among them were artefacts classified as Polynesian material culture, which soon became objects of research, yet from an archaeological perspective with a strong focus on the past. Having outlived the people who once made or collected them, however, the artefacts continue to be(come) part of various relationships in the present. With a particular interest in how creator communities value their cultural heritage within museum collections today, long-term research in Tahiti was conducted. Furthermore, it was hoped to find and map out stories directly related to the Pandora artefacts to counter the loss of certain materials and knowledge with the sinking of the ship.
The time spent in French Polynesia revealed the presence of similar objects, even though they may have transformed or made different connections. As the past continuously acts on the world, the old and the new seem to form a symbiosis: cultural heritage inspires contemporary practice and creation, while the latter keeps the former 'alive'. The paper highlights the importance of acts of making - for example in the form of art production and a collaborative exhibition project - as well as the potential to always create new stories.
Elizabeth Bonshek (British Museum)
Paper short abstract:
This paper reports upon research undertaken to identify some of the commercial pathways through which glass beads were distributed in New Guinea during the expansion of global capital in the colonial period, and how beads continue to be used in the creation of local values.
Paper long abstract:
"All things new". Tracing new forms of value through glass beads
The use of glass beads, generally referred to in historical accounts as "trade beads", commenced almost as soon as encounters with Europeans began. Their use was lamented by collectors such as the trader Richard Parkinson who, based in the Bismarck Archipelago, commented in 1907 that the locals displayed a "preference for European industrial items". This, he added, had "arisen from the feeling that all things new are to be preferred to the old…." and in so saying he revealed something of indigenous motivations in the adoption of glass beads. Today, we can appreciate that these inclusions manifest the ingenuity and enthusiasm with which people embraced and drew to them new materials and possibilities in the creation of objects of value.
Inspired by Wronska Friend's work on the introduction of ceramic replicas of indigenous forms of wealth in the Sepik (2015, From shells to ceramic: colonial replicas of Indigenous Valuables), I report upon research undertaken to identify some of the commercial pathways through which glass beads were distributed in New Guinea during the expansion of global capital in the colonial period. This process - the transmission of new materials and their integration into local forms - has contributed to new forms of value, including today, the inclusion of beaded objects in international art exhibitions. This research examines how the introduction and use of beads reveals historic and contemporary engagements with global capital.
Louise Hamby (Australian National University)
Paper short abstract:
This paper focuses on the use of manufactured cloth in Arnhem Land from early objects containing cloth in museums to the latest artistic expression of screenprinted fabrics.
Paper long abstract:
Starting around 1912 collected objects in museums from Arnhem Land reflected the value systems of the collectors. Early anthropologist were more likely to obtain items made from traditional materials rather than ones incorporating European goods. Cloth was one type of manufactured material that was not desirable by outsiders. As a result, manipulated fabric incorporated into objects made the object less likely to be collected. Although this does not mean the cloth and the object did not have value for the Aboriginal people using it. Opinions changed as decades past in the twentieth century about the use of outside materials. Originally cloth was manipulated using techniques previously known but screenprinted cloth is an introduced technique using manufactured materials. This paper examines how it ,through its various stages of production, fits within an economic and cultural system from both the artists producing it and the buyers.
Xavier Leenders (Western Australia Museum)
Paper short abstract:
Drawing upon the story of an elderly Burmese lady and her 'ethnic' paraphernalia, this paper explores how it is that objects can be brought out of one ontological reality, and into another. How can Anthropological perspectives make such an occurrence visible, and analytically productive?
Paper long abstract:
Anthropological interlocutors play with ontologies in both paradoxical and ordinary ways. Regarding objects, things become other things, mundane items suddenly become otherwise, and objects are forced to rescind their own origin so as to have import in another. How is it that objects can be brought out of one ontological reality and in to another?
Exploring this question, this paper brings together the story of Marjorie (an elderly Burmese lady), her 'ethnic' paraphernalia, World War Two, a museum collection, and the ramifications of not having met ones curatorial responsibilities. Weaving together strands of ethnicity, identity, place and significance, I contemplate how Anthropological perspectives on individual agency and cosmopolitics can make object-ontologies in transition analytically visible. Attending to these transitions reveals acts of value-making, and can help us come to terms with the ontological plasticity of objects we surround ourselves with.
David Scott
Paper short abstract:
The paper explores how anthropologists may better capture what it is to exist in the conditions of contemporaneity and whether contemporaneity actually exists outside of the images and objects that fleetingly and elusively define it?
Paper long abstract:
Art historian, Terry Smith, conceives of contemporary art as "An interrogation into the ontology of the present, that asks; What is it to exist in the conditions of contemporaneity?" (2009:2). This conceptualisation of contemporary art primarily as a means of enquiry rather than an expression / reflection of the artist's psyche, provokes a challenge to how anthropology has traditionally treated the art object. Following the perspective that art is a projection of the artist's psyche, anthropology has tended to treat art objects as a projection of culture, a 'cultural product'. Insights into a particular culture, it is therefore assumed, can be interpreted from the images, stories, sculptures and other objects the culture produces. While this is undoubtedly true, the interpretation of the object taking precedence over engaging with the question the artist is posing through their work is also problematic, especially concerning anthropological investigations into ontology of the present.
This paper poses the question as to what value could be gleaned by anthropology by examining materialism through the lens of contemporary art. How can anthropologists better capture what it is to exist in the conditions of contemporaneity and does contemporaneity actually exist outside of the images, sounds and objects that fleetingly and elusively define it?
Gretchen Stolte (University of Western Australia)
Paper short abstract:
The recognition of First Nation technologies should be an area of attention museums and collectors need to show more concern. This paper explores an unusual weaving method across several countries and regions around the world in order to showcase another form of often overlooked value.
Paper long abstract:
An anthropology of art must have a flexible and malleable theoretical foundation to be useful in working with First Nation material culture traditions. Howard Morphy writes that what is needed is an anthropology that "develops explanatory frameworks that are sensitive to context and which locate events and actions historically" (2009: 22). The art historian, Hans Belting, provides a provocation of a framework with his image/body/medium theory. In part, Belting writes that it is "not unusual for an image to acquire appeal because it presents itself to us via a seductive carrier medium, perhaps one that presents technological novelty" (2011: 16). It the value of technological novelty and the importance of including it in our explanatory frameworks, that this paper addresses.
This paper explores a rarely documented weaving method across several regions around the world in order to showcase another form of often overlooked value. The recognition of First Nation technologies should be an area of attention museums and collectors need to show more concern. Relying on curators, registrars and other museum staff to also double as artisans capable of developing that body of knowledge is not always possible. Researchers and artists can play an obvious role in this. By following the weaving technique, new questions for exploration are revealed, creating new forms of value for researchers and collections as well as contributing to the further development of an anthropology of art.
Lindy Allen (University of Queensland)
Paper short abstract:
I discuss recent research on glass beads from Aboriginal Australia focusing on museum and archaeological examples from the Top End in the 19th and early 20th century; and demonstrate the importance of anthropology in such investigation in creating greater understandings of global trade networks.
Paper long abstract:
This paper looks at two sets of glass beads held in the collections of the Australian Museum in Sydney that were recovered from an excavation and the surface of rock shelters at Oenpelli (now Gunbalanya) in western Arnhem Land during the American Australian Scientific Expedition to Arnhem Land. While much has been written about the AASEAL, for example,the volume "Barks, Birds and Billabongs " (2009:ANU Press), this rare and extraordinary find has received no attention. The Australian Museum's register states two blue glass beads were dug up by Frank Maryl Setzler, the Expedition's Deputy Leader and archaeologist at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, with Fred McCarthy from the Australian Museum in October 1948. A set of 8 glass beads were collected from the surface of another site at Oenpelli by McCarthy. So what is the importance of what may appear to be small and somewhat unremarkable things? This paper seeks to place these beads within the broader context of the use of glass beads in western Arnhem Land through an investigation of museum objects and historical images. While at the same time how these beads came to make their way to Australia is part of a broader investigation of global networks of exchange, particularly in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when glass beads were central to this economic and colonial global trade. The paper further considers the importance of anthropology in interrogating museum objects and in being part of an emerging area of interdisciplinary research.
Fran Edmonds (University of Melbourne)
Paper short abstract:
The Aboriginal artist, Maree Clarke's photographic archive is discussed in relation to the interconnections between objects, art-making and stories as a valued process for intercultural knowledge exchange.
Paper long abstract:
Mutti Mutti, Wemba Wemba, BoonWurrung artist, Maree Clarke has for many years been an avid photographer of everyday life as it occurs within the worlds of her family and extended networks. More recently, her collection of photographs, taken in the early 1990s, have become a starting point for a digital 'archive' that seeks to reveal the interconnections between Maree's lived reality as an Aboriginal woman and the processes entwined with her art-making. This art-making process is one of intercultural and intergenerational collaborations and is one that signifies the relationality between objects, artworks, people and stories.
The significance of these photographs, which have been digitally registered by a group of international and local postgraduate students from the University of Melbourne, will be discussed in relation to Maree's art-making and the students encounters with Maree. The circulation of the photographs (initially collected by students from Maree's home), which have now been turned into high-resolution images, were returned to Maree for her most recent art-making endeavours. Students experienced these endeavours during workshops that took place in Maree's backyard in the summer of 2019. The workshops, while focusing on the making of objects, including a possum skin-cloak, river-reed necklaces and a kangaroo-tooth necklace, for a major exhibition in Mildura, Victoria, also revealed how intercultural knowledge exchange, became a distinct form of knowledge sharing about diverse cultures, the process of art-making as central for supporting such exchanges, and revealed the photograph, as object, as part of a Living Archive in relation to the art-making process.