pacific-currents

Pacific Currents & Billabong Dreams

mar 14 2015 – mar 17 2019
Seattle Art Museum
Third Floor galleries

- Paddling after swarming sharks
- Embracing a totemic crocodile
- Dancing with a sea bear hat
- And watching a canoe prow cut through waves

All are powerful points of inspiration for the sculptures on view here.

The theme of water connects two installations, Pacific Currents and Billabong Dreams. Waterways in their myriad manifestations—rivers, Australian billabongs, saltwater seas—are not only places for navigation and subsistence. They also contain great ancestral forces that have shaped the lives and laws of indigenous people across the Pacific, as well as the sacred water sources of Australia.

Please note: Billabong Dreams is on view through April 22, 2018.

Supported by the Suquamish, Snoqualmie, Lummi, Muckleshoot and Squaxin Island tribes, People of the Salish Sea explores the inherent relationship between the Coast Salish people and the waters of the Pacific Northwest in this story of a 2014 Canoe Journey.

PACIFIC CURRENTS

Artists from as far away as the Sepik River of New Guinea and as near as Puget Sound honor the creatures, spirits, and people who inhabit the waterways of the Pacific. These waterways are also “highways” which require special skills of navigation. Among certain cultures, art can add a protective force or “a technology of enchantment.” Look for the Trobriand Islanders’ canoe prow, which has been worn away by saltwater, after many years of warding off danger for those who travelled vast distances.

Today, canoes continue to traverse the waters of the Pacific highway. A Tlingit and a Maori artist—Preston Singletary and Lewis Tamihana Gardiner—have worked together in glass and jade to create a striking canoe/waka sculpture that merges two distinctive traditions. Poignant documentation of local canoe journeys is ready for viewing in the nearby alcove, and the watery domains of Australia take on new meanings in Billabong Dreams, on display in the adjacent gallery.

Susan Pointe — *The First People*, 2008, Susan Point.

BILLABONG DREAMS

mar 14 2015 – Apr 22 2018

Water is a complex subject to capture visually on a dry bark or a flat canvas. Australian Aboriginal artists remind us that observing water can guide life, as people consider the depths of rockholes and billabongs, the tidal ebb and flow, the rough and calm, to be an analogue for ancestral knowledge. Artists do their best to render water’s reflections, transparence, surface, depth, and many symbolic references.

Knowledge of the sources for fresh water is essential to survival. In the Australian desert, people rely on a vast matrix of underground deposits and billabongs. These water sources are sacred sites, which are watched over, protected, and now painted on canvas. In Australia’s northern territories, artists paint on bark, referring to places where fresh water joins saltwater, and sacred laws are contained in water. Some are diagrams of deep-seated laws, while others depict the turbulent waters of conflicting ideas and emotions.

IMAGES: Sea Bear Crest Hat (Tsa.an Xuu.ujee Dajangee), ca. 1870, Haida, red cedar and paint, 10 1/2 x 15 3/4 in., Seattle Art Museum, Gift of John H. Hauberg, 83.228. Wayampajarti, 2001, Mawukura Jimmy Nerrimah, Australian Aboriginal, Walmajarri people, Fitzroy Crossing, Kimberley, Western Australia, born ca. 1924, synthetic polymer paint on canvas, 35 13/16 x 40 3/16 in., Promised gift of Margaret Levi and Robert Kaplan. © 2015 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VISCOPY, Australia. Reproduction, including downloading of Jimmy Nerrimah works is prohibited by copyright laws and international conventions without the express written permission of Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Sea Bear, 1990, Sherry Markovitz, American, born 1947, Wood, beads, shells, fabric, paint, papier mâché, 25 x 17 x 29 in. (63.5 x 43.18 x 73.66 cm), Seattle Art Museum, Gift of Terry Hunziker, 90.3, © Sherry Markovitz. Canoe/Waka, 2007, Preston Singletary, Tlingit, born 1963, Lewis Tamihana Gardiner, Maori, born 1972, Blown and sandcarved glass, pounamu (New Zealand jade), red sealing wax inlays, steel and enamel mount, 10 × 5 × 22in. (25.4 x 12.7 x 55.9cm), Collection of Preston Singletary, © Preston Singletary and Lewis Tamihana Gardiner. Mask of Ḱumugwe’ (Chief of the Sea), Kumukw'amhl (face mask of Kumugwe'), ca. 1880, Kwakwaka'wakw, Alder, red cedar bark, cloth, paint, 19 1/4 x 17 x 6 in. (48.9 x 43.18 x 15.24 cm), Seattle Art Museum, Gift of John H. Hauberg, 91.1.30. The First People, 2008, Susan Point, Canadian, Musqueam, born 1951, Red and yellow cedar, 144 x 89 in. (365.8 x 226.1cm), Seattle Art Museum, Margaret E. Fuller Purchase Fund, in honor of the 75th Anniversary of the Seattle Art Museum, 2008.31, © Susan Point. Installation views of Pacific Currents and Billabong Dreams, Photos: Nathaniel Willson.

Seattle Art Museum respectfully acknowledges that we are on Indigenous land, the traditional territories of the Coast Salish people. We honor our ongoing connection to these communities past, present, and future.

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PACIFIC CURRENTS​​​​​​

BILLABONG DREAMS

mar 14 2015 – Apr 22 2018

PACIFIC CURRENTS