Tommy Pau's - 'Mask Dancers', 2011 - as featured in the 'Insights' Exhibition

 

Tommy Pau, Mask Dancers, 2011 © Tommy Pau, 2024. Photo by Through the Looking Glass Studio.

Each year JCU Library endeavours to host the Eddie Koiki Mabo Library Art Exhibition, featuring artworks by an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander artist, to celebrate the anniversary of the official naming of the Eddie Koiki Mabo Library in 2008. 

This year’s exhibition Insights: A selection of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art from the James Cook University Art Collection, has been curated by the Library Special Collections team to shine a light on an exciting group of artworks in the James Cook University (JCU) Art Collection.  

One of the significant works on show is Tommy Pau’s Mask Dancers (2011), which is a large, hand cut, lino print on paper. 

Tommy Pau is of the Samsep tribe of Erub (Darnley Island) from the Eastern Torres Strait Islands, and also has Australian Aboriginal, Papua New Guinean, Pacific Islander and Asian heritage. Growing up on Thursday Island and in Cairns, he was taught about the importance of practicing and maintaining culture from a young age.

Pau has a strong commitment to keeping old traditions alive and believes that culture must remain true to the past and move with time to exist in the future. He considers himself as an artist who is Indigenous, not as an Indigenous artist and his wide-ranging professional arts practice includes printmaking, painting, sculpture, installation, digital media, using multimedia and anything that grabs his interest. He also writes poetry.

"I see myself as an urban artist because I lived most of my life in an urban setting such as Cairns and T.I. I take on an approach where I integrate contemporary and western styles of art with traditional contents," says Tommy. "With a diverse and complex cultural heritage, I try to incorporate all my bloodlines into an art style unique to me, it's a journey I am undertaking and experimenting on".i

Tommy’s artworks and themes are both cultural and political, and as such include personal, social and environmental topics and imagery.

Visitors to the Eddie Koiki Mabo Library on the JCU Bebegu Yumba Campus, Townsville can see Tommy Pau's artwork on the ground floor as part of the Insights Exhibition.

 

Mask Dancers features figures painted with intricate body paint designs and wearing traditional masks.  Tommy has said,

"Dancers wear masks to protect them from the spiritual world. It is a disguise hiding their true identity when performing rituals. Dancers also are endowed with the character and spirit of a certain mask, which have been invoked into the mask with magic, thus only certain persons can wear them and perform the intended rituals."ii

The dancers are captured in dramatic movement, each connected to the next and facing full masked towards the viewer / their audience. The design and shapes of their bodies are echoed in the side borders of the print which feature hammerhead sharks swirling in water, trailing strings of fish skeletons, and turtles leaving tracks in the sand as they too move through the elements in arcs with limbs extended. The human forms echo the animals’ movements in this staged, ritual performance. Behind the figures, we see traditional woven patterns, subtle and intricate textural designs and the work’s upper and lower borders feature a lace-like, frieze design created by linked, stylised dharis (headdresses). This artwork presents links between natural and human made patterns as it creatively communicates the magical inspiration for the players and illustrates the cultural elements that feature in their ceremonial activities. 

You can find this striking artwork on display on the ground floor of the Mabo Library until July 26, 2024. It is one of six Tommy Pau artworks held in the JCU Art Collection.

More about the artist:
Tommy Pau has participated in numerous exhibitions and his works are represented in many major public and private collections in Australia. In 2016 he won the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Art Award (NATSIAA) for Works on Paper. In 2022 he received a Cairns Art Gallery Fellowship Award, sponsored by the Cairns RSL Club. The resulting exhibition from this Fellowship Award is entitled Ilan Oman by Tommy Pau and is currently on display at Cairns Regional Gallery until the 4 August 2024.

i https://www.entertainmentcairns.com/tommy-pau-exhibition-exploration-of-mediums-at-umi-arts13-event.html

ii Artist Statement, 2011