Lot 403
Tatau Village, Tabar Islands, New Ireland. Horizontal frieze carved by the master carver Gabriel Songis, distinguished by its refined composition and complex iconography. The plank is framed at each end by finely carved fish heads in profile, intricately painted and animated by opercula shell eyes. Across the frieze appear two large sculptural crayfish, powerful clan motifs drawn from the sea and emblematic of ancestral identity and abundance. At the center, a projecting portrait of the deceased anchors the composition with a broad, expressive face set with opercula shell eyes and inset fiber hair tufts fixed in clay, contained within a shallow concave frame. Flanking the head are circular forms known as the "eyes of fire," conceived as floating ancestral eyes rendered in opercula shell and set within lentoid motifs with sharply tapered bases. These elements project from an intricate painted ground of an equal arm cross set within a circle. These friezes are hung on the Malagan wall, a special edifice consisting of a grass-covered wall within an enclosure. These are built in preparation for the Malagan ceremony which is held approximately every two years. On these occasions the lives of the deceased are celebrated and the friezes hanging on the wall are studied and critiqued by the participants who will have come from villages near and far. One antenna on one crayfish lost, general surface wear, but otherwise intact. Size: 80"W. x 10"H. (201 x 25cm)
Provenance: Private NYC. collection; ex. Alcheringa Gallery, Victoria, B.C., 1993. Collected from Tabar Islands, 1992. Accompanied by receipt.
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#70403
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