Priest’s dish for yaqona (kava) in duck form with pedestal stand. This dish was probably collected in Fiji in 1849 by Captain John Erskine. Only a handful of these dishes are known to remain and all came from spirit houses in Eastern Viti Levu, Bau or Viwa. Sainsbury Collection, Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts

NORWICH, UK — Revealing striking sculptures, textiles, ceramics and ivory and shell regalia, the groundbreaking exhibition “Fiji: Art & Life in the Pacific” will be on view October 15–February 12 at Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts at the University of East Anglia.

Water vessel (saqa moli), mid-Nineteenth Century. Fijian pottery was raised and decorated by hand, not on a wheel. Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, University of East Anglia.

The largest and most comprehensive museum exhibition about Fiji assembled, it will take the visitor on a journey through the art and cultural history of Fiji since the late Eighteenth Century.

The exhibition will present both Fijian artworks and a European response to them: paintings, drawings and historic photographs of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Century provide context, including watercolors by the intrepid Victorian travel writer and artist Constance Gordon Cumming, and by the Irish naval artist James Glen Wilson, who was in Fiji in the 1850s. More than 270 works of art are being loaned by exhibition partner the Museum of Archaeology & Anthropology at Cambridge, and by the Fiji Museum, the British Museum, the Pitt Rivers Museum (Oxford) and museums in Aberdeen, Birmingham, Exeter, London and Maidstone.

This exhibition results from a three-year Arts & Humanities Research Council-funded project that examined the extensive but little-known Fijian collections in the United Kingdom and overseas, and uncovered some significant treasures. Research project leader and exhibition curator Professor Steven Hooper says, “An important aspect of this exhibition is that the many examples of exceptional Fijian creativity on display are not presented as ‘ethnographic specimens’ or ‘illustrations’ of Fijian culture, but as works of art in their own right, as worthy of attention as any art tradition in the world, including Modernism. Remarkable creative imagination is applied to the making of ancestral god images, ritual dishes and regalia, and to the decoration of enormous barkcloths.”

A highlight of the exhibition will be a beautiful, newly commissioned, 26-foot, 3-inch-long double-hulled sailing canoe that has been built in Fiji and shipped to Norwich for display. Made entirely of wood and coir cord, with no metal components, the canoe results from a project to encourage canoe-building skills and is a small version of the great 98-foot, 3-inch-long vessels of the Nineteenth Century, the biggest canoes ever built.

A whale ivory necklace, Nineteenth Century made by Tongan craftsmen. Courtesy Museum of Archaeology & Anthropology, University of Cambridge.

Fiji has always been a dynamic place of cultural interactions and exchanges. Since 1000 BCE voyaging canoes have transported people and objects around the region, including to Tonga, Samoa and other neighboring Pacific islands. In the Nineteenth Century, new voyagers arrived, Europeans, with their new technologies, metal, guns and Christian religion. Sophisticated strategists, Fijian chiefs twice asked to join the British Empire, and a colonial government was established in 1874. Fiji became independent in 1970. Fiji managed the British colonial administration quite effectively, establishing a particularly close relationship with the British royal family, notably with Her Majesty the Queen.
Fiji has also succeeded in maintaining and adapting many of its cultural traditions, and today woodcarvers and textile artists continue to produce sailing canoes, kava bowls (for the preparation of the important ritual drink) and impressive decorated barkcloths, some over 196 feet long, for weddings and mortuary rituals. In the vibrant Pacific fashion scene, designers are using barkcloth and other local materials to make gowns and wedding dresses, showing their creations in London and Los Angeles. Contemporary examples of barkcloth fashion and textiles, woodcarving and intricate boat-building techniques will be included, along with the art of female Fijian tattooing.

The Sainsbury Centre’s large suite of galleries will be used to present Fiji’s rich cultural past and its important relationship with Britain. Despite a population below one million, Fiji is known globally as a major rugby nation (winning its first gold medal for Rugby 7s at the Rio Olympics this August), and as a destination for travelers.

The Sainsbury Collection, housed at the Norman Foster-designed Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, at the University of East Anglia, is renowned for its works of art from the Pacific, the Americas, Africa and Asia, as well as for its antiquities and modern works by Picasso, Moore, Giacometti and Bacon.

For additional information, http://scva.ac.uk/ or +44 1603 593199.

This whale ivory double-figure hook depicting a goddess dates to the Eighteenth–early Nineteenth Century. Courtesy University of Aberdeen Museums.

Plaited pandanus leaf basket. This example was collected by the first colonial governor of Fiji, Sir Arthur Hamilton Gordon. Courtesy of Museum of Archaeology & Anthropology, University of Cambridge.

This rare type of club in figural form, late Eighteenth–early Nineteenth Century, has an anthropomorphic head shaped in form of a helmet with recognizable Fijian design elements carved into the handle. Courtesy The Trustees of the British Museum.

“Feejeeans Resting” by James Glen Wilson, 1856, watercolor and ink private collection. Wilson was the artist on board the HMS Herald that spent time in Fiji waters 1854–57.

Model temple, coir basketry and wood. This model is a miniature version of the full-size structure that had a tall roof, short ridgepole and was used as a place for priests to embody pre-Christian divinities. Courtesy Museum of Archaeology & Anthropology, University of Cambridge.

This Sali club with flaring head form was collected by Julius Brenchley in 1865 during his voyage on HMS Curaçoa. Courtesy Maidstone Museum & Bentlif Art Gallery.

Carved from vesi wood, an inspirational man-shaped dish for yaqona (kava) has a rare form/shape. Courtesy Trustees of the Fiji Museum.

Barkcloth (detail), Fiji, circa 1850–59. Courtesy Museum of Archaeology & Anthropology, University of Cambridge / Trustees of the Fiji Museum.