Papuan Gulf Spirit Board gope

Urama peoples, Urama Island, Papuan Gulf Province, Papua New Guinea

19th century

Height: 168.9 cm

Wood, pigments

This superb and exceptionally old gope or spirit board perfectly exemplifies the genius of Papuan Gulf sculptors for graphic linear designs rendered in low relief. The abstract motifs here depicted, carved with stone or shell tools and inlaid with white kaolin on an orange ochre ground, all allude to corporeal elements: the ancestral body rendered as spirit. These sacred boards acted as intercessors for communication with the world of the ancestors.

Provenance

Norman Gardner, New York
Lance and Roberta Entwistle, London
Private Collection, USA (acquired from the above in 1992)

Publication(s)

Jean-Claude Bellier, Mélanésie, Paris, 1974, cat. 19
Christian Kaufmann, Papua Niugini: Ein Inselstaat im Werden, Basel, 1975, p. 124, pl. 157
Yves Le Fur, La Mort n’en Saura Rien, Paris, 1999, p. 138, fig. 63 (photograph by P. de Rautenfeld, 1925)

Exhibition(s)

January 30 – February 23, 1974, Paris, Galerie Jean-Claude Bellier, Mélanésie