Ralph Regenvanu, the Director of the Cultural Centre, was invited to participate - in his personal capacity as an artist - in the artist-in-residence program at the British Museum as part of the Melanesia Project in the month of May 2006.
The Melanesia Project, a joint project between Goldsmiths College, University of London and the British Museum, is supported by funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council. The project is designed to promote interaction between people from Melanesia with the Melanesian collections held at the British Museum in London. Through this process, the Project hopes to explore the contemporary meanings of the objects in the collection, including responses expressed in visual media by artists.
Aims of the Melanesia Project
The project has three broad aims:
1. To study the objects in the British Museum's Melanesian collections and provide more information about them, including their places of origin and cultural significances, through research into archives, publications and in the field.
2. To document Melanesian responses to the collections, as personal and historical narratives.
3. To promote conversation between museums and Melanesian peoples on the past and present significance of the collections, laying the ground for further collaborative work, including exhibitions.
The artist in residence program is part of the Melanesia Project. The work of the artists in residence is intended to explore some of the concerns of the Project through visual media.
Artist Statement : Ralph Regenvanu
For the 100x50cm acrylic-on-canvas painting “The Melanesia Project”, completed on the 26th May 2006 at the British Museum in London. This painting is now held in the collection of the British Museum.
The painting is about aspects of my cultural heritage that are no longer available in my own community but are available overseas, particularly in London (where this painting was produced) at the British Museum and the Royal Anthropological Institute. I have called the painting “The Melanesia Project” because it is through this Project’s activities to try to create more contemporary ‘connections’ between the Melanesian collections of the British Museum and people in Melanesia that I have been able to produce this artwork.
I have chosen to emphasise the idea of place, so on one side of the picture you have the front of the British Museum and on the other side you have a nasara or ceremonial ground.
This nasara is actually the nasara of my clan on the island of Uripiv in Vanuatu, called Emil Bweterial. Uripiv is a small island off the larger island of Malakula – you can see Malakula in the background beyond the sea. The arrangement of the standing slit drums and the designs of the faces on them are inspired by a photo taken of the drums in Emil Bweterial by A.B. Lewis in 1911. The two black palm statues as well as the crescent moon and disc images on the standing stone at the base of the roots of the banyan tree are inspired by photos also taken in Emil Bweterial by Somerville in the early 1890s. By using these designs and design elements from these historic photographs of my nasara, I am declaring that this is in fact Emil Bweterial and not just any nasara in Malakula or Vanuatu.
Artefacts currently held at the British Museum which appear in the painting include the prow on the canoe in the bottom right corner - which is also from my cultural tradition - and the three figures standing between the columns on the left. These figures are (from left to right): the Easter Island statue (Hoa Hakananai’a), a slit drum from Ambrym island in Vanuatu and a figure from northeast Malakula island. These three figures appear to be in showcases, lit by exhibit lights. The ‘double crescent moon’ design in the top right corner is the design that appears on a headdress from Malakula also held in the collection that I also believe to be from my nasara, Emil Bweterial.
The red and yellow bands symbolise the space between the British Museum and Emil Bweterial (or Vanuatu): a space of physical distance but also a space of historical distance and a site of rupture and discontinuity. The standing Greek column is one of the ones in the façade of the British Museum and it appears to be a barrier between the museum on one side and the nasara on the other side. Continuity is provided by the ‘double crescent moon’ design, however, which travels across the space symbolised by the red and yellow bands. It is an aspect of my cultural heritage coming out of the British Museum and returning to the place of its origin. In fact, by using this design in this painting I am repatriating it.
