‘Oceania’ art exhibition set to open at London’s Royal Academy

Godlike carved figures, finely wrought canoes, ingenious cane navigation aids and a cloak fashioned from the feathers of thousands of tropical birds are among the Pacific Island treasures to go on display this week at the UK’s first major exhibition of Oceanic art.

The Royal Academy of Arts in London has assembled 200 works from a region that covers a third of the world’s surface area but has been under-represented in western art galleries and museums.

The RA’s interest in the history of Oceania is more than curatorial. The institution was founded 250 years ago, just four months after Captain James Cook set off on the first of three Pacific voyages of exploration aboard HMS Endeavour. Cook took a Royal Academician artist on his second and third voyages. One of the first Pacific Islanders to reach Britain, Omai of Ra’iatea, was painted in London by Joshua Reynolds, the RA’s first president.

Adrian Locke, co-curator, said: “We want to open people’s eyes to a region that hasn’t had much attention.”

One part of the Oceania show features decorative but functional objects that relate to the most impressive feat of the Pacific Islanders: their command of the sea. The displays include canoes, carved paddles and charts made of fibre and cane that helped them navigate across thousands of miles of open ocean.

The devastating impact of the region’s encounters with European explorers, traders and missionaries, who brought disease and guns as well as Christianity to island communities, is dealt with in contemporary works such as a vast panoramic video, “In Pursuit of Venus [infected]”, by the New Zealand artist Lisa Reihana.

Meetings — sometimes peaceful, at other times violent — between Captain Cook’s men and the indigenous population are reimagined in the tableaux.

On Monday, representatives of some of the countries whose objects are featured, including descendants of some of the works’ creators, led a procession down Piccadilly into the RA’s home at Burlington House, central London, to bless the exhibition.

Mr Locke said the group were the first people allowed into the show, to see works holding a powerful cultural resonance for them. Some left offerings of feathers or stones in front of artefacts of particular spiritual significance.

“I’ve never seen anything like it at the RA,” he said. “There was an outpouring of emotion on seeing the objects here, as well as a sense of lamentation that they’re no longer where they came from.”

Oceania will run at the RA from September 29 to December 10, before opening at the Musée du quai Branly-Jacques Chirac in Paris on March 12 2019.