Papua New Guinea Artist: Mathias Kauage

Made a Sunday visit to the nearby Horniman Museum in West Dulwich, blessed among other things with a massive collection of musical instruments from around the world – what would I give to spend a year or more there just trying them all out.

There was a room of vibrant paintings by Mathias Kauage from Papua New Guinea. His work was full of exuberant folk art, a mixture of village life and his recent adventures abroad. He went to England in 1996 to receive an OBE, and some of his pictures celebrated this event in a witty way. He was apparently too shy to look the Queen in the face, but he develops the meeting in his imagination, until he shows himself relaxed and lighting up a cigarette.

The picture above is "Untitled (Captain Cook's Voyage)" 2000, found on the website of the Alcheringa Gallery, which has a glorious wealth of Contemporary Pacific tribal art within its pages. If you go there to look for Mathias Kauage, you may stay to explore many more artists.

More links to his artwork: Two Helicopters, at the October Gallery; three paintings at Bristol City's Museum & Art Gallery; and a postage stamp design at Philnet; one painting on Papua Kunst Kollektion.