WARWAR The Art of Torres Strait
Muruyguwmal Muykupal Pathamukmik (From the time of our ancestors to the present day, let us continue to breathe on the embers to keep the fire burning …) – Adhi Ephraim Bani OAM
The Torres Strait Islander flag has been raised for the first time outside Newcastle’s Town Hall to mark the opening of ‘WARWAR: The Art of Torres Strait.’ The flag features the iconic dhari (dancer’s headdress). According to curator and artist Brian Robinson, “Of all the totemic objects created, the mask used in ceremonial dance was the most important.”
The first work you see as you ascend the stairs of the Newcastle Art Gallery is a long turtle shell mask/headdress with sharp teeth, and a fish tail protruding from the. This work from the Museums Victoria Collection is identified as having been collected in 1885, artist unknown, and the date of creation is estimated to be somewhere over a period of thirty-five years from 1850 to 1885. The second work, seen through the transparent vitrine of the first, is a mask by Obery Sambo (b.1970, Waiben Thursday Island, Torres Strait) made similarly of cassowary feathers and cowrie shells with the contemporary additions of fibreglass, raffia and lawyer cane. The work has the same triangular sharp teeth and the following title in language and English: (Lamar [spirit] taking form of a turtle and a shark), 2010, commissioned by Cairns Regional Gallery. The two works, like many of the sculptures in the show, are intrinsically linked by stories of the Torres Strait people from the past, stories that co-exist in the present and the future.
