Title
Rimbu (ceremonial headdress)
mid 20th century
collected 1963
Artist
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Details
- Other Title
- Hat
- Place where the work was made
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Kagua-Erave District
→
Southern Highlands Province
→
Papua New Guinea
- Cultural origin
- Kewa people
- Dates
- mid 20th century
collected 1963 - Media categories
- Ceremonial object , Botanical material
- Materials used
- coil-woven rattan, bamboo, plant fibres, metal '7UP' drink can, white clay, red and blue pigments
- Dimensions
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77.0 x 48.0 x 45.0 cm
:
0 - Whole, 48 cm (18 7/8"), Width
0 - Whole, 65 cm (25 9/16"), Length from top to bottom of cane framework
0 - Whole, 45 cm (17 11/16"), Depth
0 - Whole, 77 cm (30 5/16"), Overall length from top to bottom of fringe
- Credit
- Gift of Stan Moriarty 1977
- Location
- Not on display
- Accession number
- 613.1979
- Copyright
- © Kewa people, under the endorsement of the Pacific Islands Museums Association's (PIMA) Code of Ethics
- Artist information
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Kewa people
Works in the collection
- Share
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About
'Rimbu' was a powerful spirit cult practiced by several groups across the southern highlands, in particular the Kewa and Anganen people. It is thought to have arrived in the Mendi Valley in the early 1900s. Ritual knowledge was bought and sold by powerful men and different forms of 'rimbu' were celebrated.
The cult involved constructing spirit houses, playing bamboo flutes ('the talk of the spirits'), reciting sacred words and sacrificing and eating pigs. 'Rimbu' was held to increase the health and fertility of people, pigs and gardens, and engaged a wide pantheon of spirits. It was an exclusively male endeavour with women and children excluded.
Collected by Stan Moriarty at the Mount Hagen Show in 1963, this 'rimbu' headdress reflects the ingenuity and inventiveness of highlands artists in their appropriation of modern materials into traditional forms; note the incorporated '7UP' drink can.
[Exhibition text for 'Plumes and pearlshells: art of the New Guinea highlands', AGNSW, 2014]
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Exhibition history
Shown in 1 exhibition
Plumes and pearlshells: art of the New Guinea highlands, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 30 May 2014–10 Aug 2014
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Bibliography
Referenced in 2 publications
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Natalie Wilson (Editor), Plumes and pearlshells: art of the New Guinea highlands, Sydney, 2014, 100 (illus.), 101 (colour illus.), 161. cat.no. 44
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Natalie Wilson, Tribal art, 'Plumes and pearlshells: art of the New Guinea highlands', pg. 76-85, Belgium, Summer 2014, 79 (colour illus.), 83. fig.nos. 6 and 7
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