News Archive

Behind the extraordinarily high quality photographs in Through the Kunai Grass (Berndt Museum at the Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery) is a tale of a medical discovery.

In the early 1950s, anthropologists Ronald and Catherine Berndt were among the first white people to enter the valleys of the Eastern Highlands region of Papua New Guinea. Using very slow Kodachrome 1 film, they captured brilliant images of the people in their traditional dress and symbolic masks.

And they also made the first observations of what is known today as Creutzfeldt-Jakob or mad cow, disease.

John Stanton, Director of the Berndt Museum, which holds the Berndts' photographs, said it was locally called kuru , or the ‘Laughing Sickness', because the sufferers had involuntary tremors and spasms which sometimes included vocal spasms, which sounded like laughter.

"The disease was linked to their highly ceremonial practices of cannibalism," Dr Stanton said. "But I understand it appeared briefly, then disappeared within a decade after the Administration banned such practices.

"The Berndts were the first people to identify the disease and now there are medical researchers who are trying to track the epidemiology of it who are keen to see the photographs, including about 600 black and white ones which are not part of the exhibition," he said.

Dr Stanton said careful storage in the dark had helped the Museum reproduce these fantastic photographs for the exhibition.

Two other current exhibitions, LUMINOUSflux and Dark Portals , cover vastly different themes: harnessing light into vivid and glowing sculpture; and using the genteel arts of needlework and embroidery to create something unexpectedly dark.

LUMINOUSflux , which was launched on LUMINOUSnight, includes specially commissioned works, others on loan from the Kerry Stokes Collection, and two newly-acquired creations which use advertising lightboxes from the London Underground.

Local artist Rebecca Bauman achieves stunning visual effects with mirrors, origami paper, perspex, wrapping paper and, of course, light, creating shimmering colours on the walls of the gallery.

While you want to stand back and drink in the jewel-like effects of her work, you feel you want to get right up close to Sera Water's delicate pieces, to absorb the intricate stitching and layering.

Dark Portals is part of the Cruthers Collection of Women's Art.

These two latter exhibitions will run until 20 April while Through the Kunai Grass will continue at LWAG until 1 June.