The Globalisation of Samoan Tattoo - Sean Mallon
Current research projects include a study of contemporary Samoan tattooing practices. This research began with the international research project titled Tatau/Tattoo: Embodied Art and Cultural Exchange, c. 1760-2000, funded by the Getty Grant Program (United States) and the Arts and Humanities Research Board (United Kingdom) and led by Professor Nicholas Thomas (Goldsmiths University, London).
This three-year research project, brought together researchers from Hawai'i, Samoa, Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The key focus was on the critical but neglected area of Oceanic-European interaction from the eighteenth century to the present. It addressed basic gaps in the historic record, documented remarkable innovations in contemporary Polynesian cultures, and investigated the transformations of gendered and empowering body arts, through colonial and postcolonial exchanges.
The latest planned output from the project is a book of photographs by New Zealand photographer Mark Adams documenting Samoan tattooing in New Zealand from the late 1970s to 2005. This book will be published by Te Papa Press in 2010.
Tīvaevae Making in New Zealand - Grace Hutton
The focus of this project is based around interviews of Cook Island women who have made a reputation for themselves as makers and designers of tīvaevae in New Zealand. A book manuscript documenting this project is in preparation.
An Illustrated history of Pacific Islanders in New Zealand – (editors) Sean Mallon, Kolokesa Mahina –Tuai and Damon Salesa
This book will trace the 1000 year history of Pacific peoples arrivals and settlement in New Zealand. It features illustrated essays from 14 writers and researchers.
Narratives of migration, encounter, and cultural exchange will be told throughout the book and illustrated by carefully selected objects and supporting personal stories from people in the Pacific communities. The book closely aligns with the exhibition Tangata o le Moana: the story of Pacific people in New Zealand that opened at Te Papa in 2007.
Learn more about Tangata o le Moana: the story of Pacific People in New Zealand
A History of Art in Oceania
Dr Peter Brunt (Senior Lecturer in Art History) and Sean Mallon (Senior Curator of Pacific Cultures at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa received a Marsden grant in 2007 to research a new history of art in Oceania.
Conceived by Brunt and Mallon, the project is a three year collaboration with Dr Deidre Brown (Senior Lecturer in Architecture at the University of Auckland) and three London-based scholars: Professor Nicholas Thomas (Director of the Cambridge Museum of Anthropology and Archaeology at the University of Cambridge), Dr Lissant Bolton (Head of Oceania Section, The British Museum) and Professor Susanne Kuechler (Anthropology, University College London) and Dr Damian Skinner (Art Historian).
The Art in Oceania project will explore how indigenous art traditions have been profoundly shaped by history, from the politics of monumental architecture in the ancient Pacific to numerous artistic practices stimulated by colonial contact to the recent emergence of modernist and Contemporary Pacific art in the decolonising decades since the Second World War.
The Politics of Leprosy Control in Samoa during the New Zealand Administration from 1914 to 1922 – Safua Akeli
A research focus on leprosy control policies implemented in Samoa by the New Zealand administration from 1914 to 1922. Internal and external negotiations enabled New Zealand doctors, politicians and administrators to re-locate leprosy sufferers from the Samoan mainland of Upolu to the island of Nu’utele in 1918 and later organised their removal in 1922 to the Makogai leprosy colony in Fiji. A paper for publication is in development.