TY - BOOK
T1 - Atua: sacred gods from Polynesia
AU - Hansen, David
PY - 2015
Y1 - 2015
N2 - Approaching Atua: Sacred Gods from Polynesia, ones first encounter is with two semi-abstract totemic figures from a marae by Cook Islands artist Eruera Nia. Embedded in a low, square, grey plinth, these silver-weathered wooden arabesques are at once descriptive and abstract, hieratic and dynamic, leaping up into vision and consciousness in a manner comparable to that of the [End Page 307] National Gallery of Australias modernist masterpiece, Constantin Brancusis Birds in Space. Then, turning right to enter the exhibition galleries, one is confronted with a pair of related figures: two Tongan ceremonial clubs, their tall, narrow staves fanning out at the top into lethal, skull-splitting wedges. The inlaid marine ivory of the one and reflected light from the others richly lozenge-carved surface scintillate, like navigators stars or drifting sea spray.
AB - Approaching Atua: Sacred Gods from Polynesia, ones first encounter is with two semi-abstract totemic figures from a marae by Cook Islands artist Eruera Nia. Embedded in a low, square, grey plinth, these silver-weathered wooden arabesques are at once descriptive and abstract, hieratic and dynamic, leaping up into vision and consciousness in a manner comparable to that of the [End Page 307] National Gallery of Australias modernist masterpiece, Constantin Brancusis Birds in Space. Then, turning right to enter the exhibition galleries, one is confronted with a pair of related figures: two Tongan ceremonial clubs, their tall, narrow staves fanning out at the top into lethal, skull-splitting wedges. The inlaid marine ivory of the one and reflected light from the others richly lozenge-carved surface scintillate, like navigators stars or drifting sea spray.
U2 - 10.1353/cp.2015.0022
DO - 10.1353/cp.2015.0022
M3 - Textual Creative Work
BT - Atua: sacred gods from Polynesia
ER -