<Torres Strait Islands
Limited Edition Lino Cut, .
46 x 62 cm (18.4 x 24.8 ins)
Knowledge of Torres Strait Islander culture and tradition within the mainstream Australian and international community is generally subsumed under the indigenous umbrella of Aboriginal Australia. This denies the inherent cultural and physical differences that exist between the two groups. The incorporation of the Torres Strait Islands as part of the colony of Queensland in 1879 meant that a Melanesian cultural group, with characteristics more akin to neighbouring Papua New Guinea, became confused with the dominant Aboriginal culture of the colonized Australian continent. The small population base of the Torres Strait means that Torres Strait Islanders exist as a minority within a minority. Where Aboriginal people remain voiceless, Torres Strait Islanders remain faceless as well as voiceless.
In 1898, over a thousand objects of material culture were removed from the Torres Strait Islands by anthropologists of the Haddon expedition from Cambridge University. In recent years, in an attempt to redress the loss of this material culture, a group of artists have established a studio on Moa Island where they produce artwork - largely prints, with a strong figurative imagery and intricate design.
And now, a century after the Haddon expedition, a group of artists from the Torres Strait Islands are visiting Cambridge to see their ancestors' cultural artefacts and to compare them to their own recently developed visual practice.
Contemporary Torres Strait Island art depicts legends and creation stories: Head-hunters recall the days of cannibalism, of raiding parties attacking homes built in treetops and the sorcerers and witches who came to their final grief lying in the sea to become the islands and rocky outcrops scattered throughout the Torres Strait Islands today.
These extraordinary images are part of a strong desire on the part of the Torres Strait people to keep their culture alive. It was this same strength that resulted in the famous Mabo Decision, in which the Torres Strait Islands were handed back to their original owners by the Commonwealth Government of Austrailia.