Loan (Exhibition)
Display in 'Oceania: Imagining the Pacific' Exhibition. August - November 2011.
Event Date
Author: maa

Context (CMS Context)
(Bio) Female donor: Professor Dame Marilyn Stathern, William Wyseman Professor of Anthropology, 1993- 2008, Cambridge University, who conducted fieldwork in the PNG Highlands and in Port Moresby from the 1960s onward. Displayed in the donor’s rooms at Girton College.
(Bio) Kauage (c. 1944-2003) was born in Chimbu Province in the Papua New Guinea highlands. In the late 1960s he was employed as a labourer in Port Moresby and was inspired by an exhibition of drawings by a fellow-Highlander, Timothy Akis. Like Akis, he was encouraged and supported by Georgina Beier. Together with her husband Ulli, Georgina influentially fostered contemporary art, theatre, and literature in Nigeria and Papua New Guinea.
Kauage's work evolved rapidly. Early on he drew fantastic creatures inspired by Chimbu myth, but soon progressed to scenes of Moresby town life and political events. Embracing colour, he went on to produce major paintings around Papua New Guinea's Independence in 1975, aspects of colonial history, and his own experience - not least his meeting with the Queen, who awarded him an OBE in 1998. His later works were often signed 'Kauage - Artist of PNG'.

Event Date 11/2/2011
Author: maa

Description (CMS Description)
Print, white on black, titled 'Magic fish'. Image shows a fish in the centre with a quadruped above and an anthropomorphic figure below. Made by Mathias Kauage, 1969.
Event Date 11/2/2011
Author: maa

Loan (Exhibition)
Royal Academy of Arts, 14/09/2018 to 09/12/2018, Oceania
Event Date 14/9/2018
Author: Rachel Hand