To Dance, To Sing: Headdresses from the Gallery Collection at Cairns Art Gallery
Dance masks and headdresses are unique in the each of the five island clusters of the Torres Strait and Cape York Peninsula, with varied styles, materiality, complexity, purpose, and meaning.
Performing with these objects and singing the songs that accompany them during dance is a way of honouring and embodying land, sea and sky. Dance and song also call up the ancestral spirit realm where the people who have gone before are a felt presence.
The works in this exhibition include examples of finely crafted masks and headdresses, linocut prints and drawings depicting ceremonial events.
To dance, to sing gathers works by significant artists including Dr Ken Thaiday Snr, Obery Sambo, Allson Edrick Tabuai, Alick Tipoti, Joel Sam, Toby Cedar, as well as others.
Image:
Segar PASSI
Meriam Mir
A young Murray Island man in a mask 1990
synthetic polymer paint on canvas
38.5 x 49.5 cm
Cairns Art Gallery Collection
Gift of David Everist, 2019
