Book Description

Across the great breadth of the Pacific, artists have always employed a wide variety of materials and techniques to create objects for specific purposes, from the domestic to the sacred, from the elegantly simple to the sumptuously ornate, and from the historic to the contemporary. In this book, the author draws on striking and colourful examples from the Pacific's major cultural regions: Polynesia, Melanesia and Micronesia, beginning with an introduction asking 'What is Pacific art?' Every artwork is reproduced in close detail with intriguing, elucidating captions, enabling comparisons between diverse objects and media. Ideal as an introduction to any museum or gallery visit, a spur to creative inspiration or simply an insight into the wealth of art from Oceania, this beautiful book offers a striking and unusual view, and evokes and honours the skills of the most accomplished artists and craft workers of the Pacific, past and present.