Talking Tapa: Pasifika Bark Cloth in Queensland

Talking Tapa: Pasifika Bark Cloth in Queensland is a BEMAC initiative. It is currently showing at The Museum of Brisbane, City Hall, Brisbane CBD. Catch it while it is here until 11 October, before it leaves for Cairns.

Australia’s Pacific heritage continues to grow. Brisbane and Queensland’s eastern seaboard is increasingly becoming home for thousands upon thousands of Pacific islanders. So it is timely that this exhibition Talking Tapa: Pasifika Bark Cloth in Queensland has been developed to reflect this.

Tapa is the common name for beaten bark cloth from The Pacific. While most tapa is made from the inner bark (bast) of the paper mulberry tree, fig and breadfruit are also represented in this exhibition.



Works from the Melanesian nations and islands of Papua New Guinea, West Papua a province of Indonesia, The Solomon Islands and New Caledonia, and the Polynesian Samoa, Tonga, Fiji, and Wallis and Futuna are represented. Community loans hang beside museum pieces. Some have be used very recently in Queensland to decorate homes, wedding receptions, meeting halls, birthday parties, for use at funerals and perhaps most commonly for Fijians to wear at their weddings.

Fijian wedding outfits vie with Papuan New Guinean ceremonial skirts and cloaks, very large Tongan pieces, loincloths and headdresses from the Solomon Islands, bark cloth lengths from Erromongo Island, Vanuatu and unusual tapa clothing from Wallis and Futuna. Community stories about tapa have translations in Tongan, Fijian and Samoan and sit beside detailed information about the history, uses and production of tapa from our Pacific neighbours.



The oldest bark cloth in the show is from Futuna Island and dates from the 1860s, whilst the latest was acquired in the Solomons in September 2008. Tapa decoration draws on clan and family patterning, the spirit world, the plant, bird, animal and fish kingdoms, abstract and geometric designs, as well as historical and contemporary events and representations.

Talking Tapa is a national traveling exhibition sponsored and presented by BEMAC, curated by Joan Winter and out managed by Museum and Gallery Services Queensland. It has been financially assisted by Visions of Australia, an Australian Government Program supporting touring exhibitions by providing funding assistance for the development and touring of Australian cultural material. This project is also proudly funded by Queensland Government’s Gambling Community Benefit Fund and Brisbane City Council.

National itinerary - tour

2009 Queensland

• USQ (Springfield, Ipswich) 12 Feb –19 March

• Artspace Mackay 27 Mar – 10 May

• Gladstone Regional Art Gallery 5 June – 11 July

• Museum of Brisbane 24 July – 11 Oct NOW

• Perc Tucker Regional Gallery, 23 Oct – 6 Dec

• Cairns Regional Gallery 11 Dec – 31 Jan 10

2010 Victoria

• Monash Gallery of Art 10 Feb – 11 April

• Ballarat Fine Art Gallery 17 April – 30 May

2010 NSW

• Mosman Art Gallery 5 June – 18 July

• Manning Regional Gallery 23 July – 5 Sept

• Taree

• Bathurst Regional Gallery 15 Oct – 28 Nov

Further venues may be included in 2011. If you know a venue that may be interested please let BEMAC know.

Catch TALKING TAPA where you can and enjoy this wonderful show.