The Art of Easter Island

Decorated envelope

Manchester Museum’s exhibition about the statues of Easter Island Making Monuments on Rapa Nui: the Stone Statues from Easter Island has been receiving some good feedback from the public and is even inspiring some visitors creatively as the image of the hand-decorated envelope above from a Belgian enquirer shows. In this respect the exhibition is stimulating people in a similar way to the Lindow Man temporary exhibition a few years ago. The latter prompted an artistic outflowing of poetry, drawings and even 3D models that showed people’s deep-seated need to respond in very personal ways to topics that either inspire or move them.

Since opening in early April visitors have left a lot of complimentary and constructive comments about the exhibition and many of them, especially but by no means always children, have added  drawings and doodles showing the moai. The drawings perfectly capture the enigmatic quality of Easter Island statues and I am now kicking myself for having used lined paper in the visitors’ book. We only touched briefly upon the inspiration that Rapa Nui’s statues gave to a generation of modern sculptors, including Jacob Epstein (1880-1959), Henri Gaudier Brzeska (1891-1915) and Henry Moore (1898-1986). One visitor to the exhibition commented “The heads remind me of Anthony Gormley’s statues on Crosby Beach in Liverpool – very interesting. Fab exhibition. Keep up the good work.”

Perhaps the strong appeal they make to our artistic taste is because we have already been influenced by seeing European works-of-art inspired by them. They reflect back onto the statues the aspects of modern art that grew out of exposure to the so-called ‘primitive’. This would explain why  some visitors embellish their drawings of the statues by adding a surrealist moustache with curled over tip or show the statue smoking a joint.

It is perhaps not so surprising that there are so many sketches of the heads: lots of simple line-drawing profiles express the visitor’s appreciation of the Museum’s work.

Moai by Josh

Some children who have been to the exhibition on a school trip have since come back with their families. Take the Davies family who left the comment: ” McKenzie visited with school on Friday. He loved it and so he’s brought us back to teach us what he has learnt” (25/05/15).

Birdman Race competitor?

It’s not just about the statues, however. The exhibition explores the deeper meanings the different kinds of stone had for the islanders and we show samples of volcanic rock. This clearly struck a chord with one visitor, as the photo below shows.

Volcano fan

 

Easter Island Exhibition at Manchester Museum

Moai Hava and Sam in the World Museum in Liverpool

Since returning from the Ke EMu conference in Washington on Saturday I’ve been thinking about Manchester Museum’s next temporary exhibition which will be about the stone statues or moai of Rapa Nui or Easter Island. We are in the fortunate position of being able to borrow a statue called moai Hava from the British Museum, and a selection of supporting objects from the BM and other museums. The exhibition will draw upon the results of fieldwork on Easter Island undertaken by Professor Colin Richards of the University of Manchester’s Department of Archaeology. Our ‘Making Monuments on Rapa Nui: the Stone Statues of Easter Island’  exhibition will open in early April 2015 and run for six months in the Museum’s temporary exhibition gallery.

It is incredibly exciting to work with material from Easter Island, which must rank as some of the highest profile archaeology in the world. When Europeans encountered the island for the first time early in the 18th century they were astonished to see the statues. They found it difficult to reconcile the scale of the statues with the apparent poverty of the islanders, or RapaNui as they call themselves, and the absence of sources of materials such as timber with which to move and erect the stones. The theory that at some point prior to the European visits the great civilisation responsible for the stone statues had collapsed is present in the earliest historical accounts and much ink has flowed since then to try and explain the disaster which befell the inhabitants. During the 1970s palaeobotanist  John Flenley sampled the peat in the volcanic craters to study the history of the island’s vegetation and by studying the pollen in the cores showed that palm trees had originally covered the island. The felling of the palm trees for farmland and for timber with which to move the statues is thought to have brought about an environmental disaster leading to the  collapse of the islanders’ way of life. The large numbers of obsidian tools such as those featured in an earlier post on the Ancient Worlds blog  were thought to be evidence of the islanders’ nightmarish descent into violence, anarchy and  civil war.

Obsidian mataa from Easter Island in Manchester Museum

The various theories to account for Easter Island’s decline have been hotly debated. More recently some archaeologists and anthropologists have blamed contact with Europeans for the collapse of Easter Island’s traditional culture rather than an environmental catastrophe. The spread of diseases against which the islanders had no immunity and the notorious ‘black-birding’ raids to pressgang labourers to work in Peru’s guano mines in the 1860s reduced the native Rapanui population to little more than a hundred people. What the population had been before then is anybody’s guess but at the time of the first European visits it thought to have been about 3000, and a figure as high as 20,000 has been suggested for the earlier period.

Puna Pau where a quarry face has been excavated. Photo: Adam Stanford © Aerial-Cam Ltd for RNLOC.

The Manchester Museum exhibition will focus on the statues. Professor Colin Richards and his colleagues have recently excavated a stone quarry at Puna Pau where headdress stones or topknots for the stone statues were carved. We propose as part of the exhibition to supplement the original material with reconstructions of an ahu or ceremonial platform on which some of the moai or stone statues once stood, a pukau or topknot that would have sat on top of the head of one of the moai, and the quarry face at Puna Pau to show visitors the nature of the stone working on the island.

Stone statue with repositioned pukao headress and inlaid eyes. Photo: Adam Stanford © Aerial-Cam Ltd for RNLOC.

As part of the exhibition we will also explore the  part  the statues have played in stimulating sculptors such as Henry Moore (1898-1986) and Henri Gaudier-Brzeska (1891-1915). This influence can also be seen in popular culture. Easter Island statues frequently feature in comics and graphic novels for example. When I was in Washington last week I somewhat furtively visited a comics store to try and obtain copies of the Adventures of Batman, The Mighty Thor and Uncle Scrooge. Had museum colleagues seen me in there I’d have protested it was only to gather materials for the Easter Island exhibition. In The Mighty Thor (1982), for instance, the superhero battles giant stone statues from Saturn which are clearly inspired by the moai. If any readers have copies and might be willing to lend them for our exhibition please let me know.

Moai from Easter Island in the National Museum of Natural History in Washington

Another treat during the Ke EMu conference in Washington was visiting the National Museum of Natural History (Smithsonian) and seeing another Easter Island statue or moai from Ahu O’Pepe. An image on the label shows an Easter Island head with its eye re-inserted. We intend to recreate one of the eyes as part of the exhibition using coral and obsidian. So there’s lots to look forward to in this exhibition and there’s great excitement at the Museum as the project gets under way.

Easter Island head with inlaid eye (Smithsonian label)

Koma Figurines Interview with Mr Saibu at Manchester Museum

Prof Tim Insoll and Mr Ben Baluri Saibu at Manchester Museum in October 2013

Transcript of a filmed conversation between Mr Ben Baluri Saibu from Koma Land Ghana and Prof Tim Insoll of the University of Manchester concerning the terracotta figurines from Koma Land that are on display at Manchester Museum. The exhibition about the figurines opened in October and will close early in May 2014. The film of the interview lasts about 6 minutes and will be shown together with an interview with Prof Ben Kankpeyeng of the University of Ghana in the third floor exhibition gallery at Manchester Museum.

TI: It’s my great pleasure to introduce Mr Ben Baluri Saibu, who is a native of Yikpabongo where the work has been going on. A distinguished gentleman, he is also a practising lawyer and he is a former member of parliament – the Ghanaian parliament… So you’re actually from Yikpabongo?

BBS: Yes, I was born and bred in Yikpabongo.

TI: Ok.

BBS: Except for when I went to school I’ve always been Yikpabongo.

TI: And that means you’ve known about the figurines all through your life?

BBS: Oh yes, at birth.

Ti: At birth.

…

TI: … well all your life in Yikpabongo, you’ve obviously see the other side of the coin, the other side of the situation, where these were being stolen, weren’t they? The figurines to supply the international art market. I know this is something you feel very angry and passionate about.

BBS: Yes, yes.

TI: How did you stop it? How did the community stop people exploiting your resources?

BBS: You see as I was saying, we grew up with these things, we used to play with them. No, the girls when they went to the bush or they were going to the riverside to fetch water, if they found one pregnant woman they would put it on their back and be playing like our mothers do in Africa.

laughing…

TI (laughing): Like how they tie the baby on?

BBS: Yes. When we went, when we went out hunting or as shepherds, we found them. They were commonplace. When they were doing compound farming, they gathered then together. That’s why you have some of them being well broken pieces that were just thrown there anyhow and erm, and those that were exceptionally intriguing, we asked questions certainly as kids. But you know, there were limits, say “Oh no please don’t go beyond bounds” particularly if the shrine was your father’s. Don’t dare (?) ask deep questions about it.

TI: What about if people were actually selling them?

BBS: Yes, until, until, until around 1979 I don’t know what happened. Some people must have come in there and they must have seen them somewhere and they must have realised that they have value.

Piece of pot left behind by looters

TI: I was told in your village it stopped but in the surrounding area, the 1990s were particularly bad for looting. Is that correct?

BBS: Yes, the problem because, er, no, much more serious because when Professor Anquandah published their first monograph – I think it was published in Rotterdam, eh?

TI: That’s correct.

BBS: So many people had access to that monograph and the information was now wide so people started sending their syndicates using the boys in the villages to buy. I would be sleeping in the village. In the night they would be in street, erm, selling with the zebra people and that kind of thing. So I actually had to, I had to make it, take stout measures. I even got some of the elders prosecuted…

TI: I think it’s important to also note that these boys from your village … they doing… they were paid very little money. It’s the international market where the big money is being made. So essentially they are exploiting both the people, the environment and the cultural resources of your area.

BBS: Certainly, certainly… they were given just pittances in English money wouldn’t you say?

TI: How much would you suggest?

BBS: One time I went to them and I saw a big one and I asked my brother to keep so that next I would send it to the museum when I went back the other time… 50 cedis

Ghanaian One cedi coin courtesy of Keith Sugden, Curator of Numismatics, Manchester Museum

Ghanaian cedi (pronounced see-dee) coin showing cowry shell

TI: Ghanaian cedis

BBS: Fifty Ghanaian cedis I think. This was around I think in 19… 2001 or so.

TI: Yes very small money.

BBS: Yes, very small.

So I can, I can, I can assure the world, the archaeological world that today, even though we haven’t stopped what, the public education, it is going down where…

TI: So the looting is declining?

BBS: Yes! Now that the field students go from year to year, they go…

TI: Do you think it is also helpful they were put on the Red List of antiquities that can’t be sold? Was that helpful?

BBS: Yes, well, I tell them. I tell them, even if you were zebra and he comes to buy it from you, even if he is taking it out abroad. The Police will arrest him and bring him back. And if he is brought back he will point you out.

TI: Yes.

BBS: And you will be arrested.

TI: Very good. So I think you have to be congratulated for what you have done to protect and promote the heritage in the region but finally, what I would like to ask you is what development would you like to see in Yikpabongo that this material is presented? How can the community benefit from the figurines directly?

BBS: Yes, we already far, we already produce our own food. If there is rain we can have bread. If there is we have jam, we have beans, we have ground nuts. We have a few animals to sell but the most important thing, because of the inaccessibility of the area we have been late in receiving, is formal education.

TI: Mmm.

BBS: You can imagine that whole Overseas Valley even though people went to school long before I went. I am the first graduate. I have been the first lawyer.

BBS: Yes, the privation affects all of us in that valley, so if you asked me, the good Lord what to give to you, something good for your people, what would you ask God to give you? It would be education.

TI: Education.

BBS: Of course, we have it late and now that the university is coming there it is an opportunity for us. It will attract the children, it will not run away. If we have, what, good class room, if we have, what, a good museum where these things are kept…

TI: In the context of the exhibition, I think it’s useful to for us to hear something about that. So you’re planning a small exhibition in Yikpabongo that tourists and locals can both use?

BBS: Yes, yes. In the first place the people themselves will realise that if these things were not important people wouldn’t  fight to get them permanently displayed somewhere and however small it is people will be coming from other places to see what is happening. Certainly ideas change when you meet others. Now that the Legon students go and their lecturers go, when then the children pass the secondary school they get admission. Ben and colleagues they are there so I’ve been telling the people, let us protect them. Legon will come. When the children qualify for the secondary school, they are… their entry in the university is guaranteed, and they have been seeing it. Destroy the mounds and destroy your children’s work… future education. So my paramount thing is that whatever steps can be done … so that we also have, what, reliable educational facilities.

BBS: Yes, sure, yes, yes.

TI: And I believe that the exhibition is actually going to transfer ultimately, in the end, to Yikpabongo, so you’ll display there the exhibition that we can see here?

BBS: Yes, yes.

TI: That will go there.

BBS: Yes.

TI: And be nicely looked after?

BBS: Yes.

TI: Very good.

BBS: Yes.

TI: Well, it’s been a great pleasure talking to you.

BBS: It’s been my pleasure.

Mr Saibu addressing the audience at the opening of the Fragmentary Ancestors exhibition

You can read a review of the exhibition in the Journal of Museum Ethnography:-

Pole, L. (2014). Fragmentary Ancestors: Figurines from Koma Land, Ghana (Manchester Museum, University of Manchester). Journal of Museum Ethnography 27, 168-174.

 

Fragmentary Ancestors Opening

Opening of the Koma Exhibition at Manchester Museum

Last night saw the opening of Fragmentary Ancestors Figurines from Koma Land exhibition. Over the last few days, with excitement building and staff working feverishly to meet the deadline, there has been a quite a buzz around the Museum. With about an hour to go before the guests started arriving the last banner was hung, the final display case window was secured and the ‘deep’ cleaning carried out.

Horse or camel rider being installed

Alan Seabright the photographer from the Manchester Art Gallery took photographs of the exhibition space, which I have to say, though I have to declare an interest naturally, looks stunning. Peter Farmer’s palette of warm reds and terracotta orange gives the space a a sense of vibrancy that does a lot to dispel the stereotypical image of Africa as a ‘Dark Continent’.

Fragmentary Ancestors exhibition

But it is the figurines, so full of character, and it seems latent power, that dominate the gallery. Some people have compared them to gargoyles but this is to do them a disservice. There is a healthy vitality about them still. They really are spectacular and Alan the technician and Irit from the conservation team have created mounts that show them to best advantage. Personal favourites are the anencephalic head, the horse or camel rider and a piece I refer to fondly as ‘Fungus the Bogeyman’ .

Head of figurine from Koma Land

They are not just inert exhibits they inspire in the viewer a desire to personalise them, to refer to them as people. The figurine with a Mohican is a dead ringer, in my opinion, for Robert de Niro in Taxi Driver! They invite these sorts of comparisons with popular culture and its going to be very interesting over the next six months to see what other comparisons are made.

Are you looking at me?

At the opening Museum Director Dr Nick Merriman, Prof Tim Insoll, Prof Ben Kankpeyeng and Mr Ben Saibu gave short speeches. The latter’s speech was a barn-storming performance that managed to reference Martin Luther King, Olaudah Equiano and Wilfrid Owen.  

Mr Saibu addressing the audience at the opening of the Fragmentary Ancestors exhibition

Prof Kankpeyeng had warned the audience beforehand that the combination of lawyer and politician was a dangerous combination and if the audience’s response was anything to go by, Mr Saibu’s party would have won by a landslide had an election been held on the day of the opening.

Celebrating the Fragmentary Ancestors opening with Mr Saibu, Mrs Aba, Sam and Ben Kankpeyeng

There is a programme of events and activities with a tour of the gallery by Professor Insoll and Professor Kankpeyeng on Saturday and a lecture on Monday afternoon before our Ghanaian guests return home on Tuesday. Fragmentary Ancestors Figurines from Koma Land Ghana can be seen at Manchester Museum  until 5th May 2014. This is the first time the figurines have been shown in the UK with the approval of the Ghanaian authorities.

Fragmentary Ancestors Figurines from Koma Land Exhibition

Head of horse or camel rider from the Fragmentary Ancestors exhibition

With little more than a week to go before we open our new temporary exhibition, Fragmentary Ancestors Figurines from Koma Land Ghana, on 25th October there is a real sense of expectation and anticipation building at Manchester Museum.

Work on this project began about a year ago when it was decided to put on an exhibition featuring the results of archaeological fieldwork in Koma Land in Northern Ghana involving the University of Manchester, the University of Ghana and the Ghana Museums and Monuments Board (GMMB). In May, Sam Sportun, Senior Conservator at Manchester Museum, flew to Ghana to pack a selection of the figurines for exhibition in Manchester. Since that time Prof Tim Insoll and the Ghanaian partners wrote the text for the exhibition and the accompanying  booklet, and FDA Design Ltd designed the new displays.

Head of figurine from Koma Land

This exhibition is the first ever officially approved showing of the clay figurines, which were made by a previously little-understood people in Koma Land in Ghana in West Africa. The figurines are often fragmentary and depict stylised two-headed creatures, bird figures, and animals. They are believed to represent the ancestors. It is possible that some had liquid offerings or libations poured into channels in the figurines, and that some might have been linked with healing and medicine. Scanning is now being carried out to study these channels in detail and to try and identify any substances that survive in them.

Head of man wearing a cap from Koma Land

The figurines were discovered during archaeological fieldwork directed by Professor Ben Kankpeyeng (University of Ghana) working with Professor Tim Insoll (University of Manchester) and the Ghana Museums and Monuments Board (GMMB). The Koma figurines have been dated to between approximately 500 and 1300 AD.  This corresponds broadly-speaking to the early to mid Medieval Period in Britain.

We don’t know a great deal about how the figurines were used but it would appear that they were used in special ceremonies and rituals in which the sprits of the ancestors were invoked. In the course of these ceremonies the figurines were deliberately broken. The fragments are often found in mounds, possibly because they were felt to have residual power and had to be disposed of carefully.

Janus figurine from Koma Land

As will be clear from the photos the figurines are full of character and have tremendous presence. The people who made the figurines were very skilled. For that reason the Koma Land figurines have generated considerable interest amongst collectors on the international art market with the result that the mounds where the figurines are found have been looted by treasure hunters. Of course, once removed from their original contexts and localities and the relationship between the objects as archaeological finds destroyed, a huge amount of invaluable information is lost. The GMMB and the University of Ghana have been working with local people to explain to them the cultural importance of the figurines and to support them in protecting the mounds. Though other figurines have been displayed outside Ghana these are the first to be exhibited abroad with the approval of the Ghanaian authorities. After the exhibition closes the figurines will be put on display at the Museum in Accra in Ghana.

The Fragmentary Ancestors exhibition opens to the general public on 25th October and runs until 5th May 2014.

You can read a review of the exhibition in the Journal of Museum Ethnography:-

Pole, L. (2014). Fragmentary Ancestors: Figurines from Koma Land, Ghana (Manchester Museum, University of Manchester). Journal of Museum Ethnography 27, 168-174.

Alan Seabright took the photographs for the exhibition and exhibition booklet (available price £3.50 from the Museum shop).

Sampling of the Koma Land figurines by Dr Heather Robinson was published in 2017.