Time, space and ambiguity across the Coral Sea

Abstract

Connections across the Coral Sea occupies a modest gallery space just inside the entrance to the Queensland Museum. It seeks to explore the rich cultures and trading relationships of ancient First Nations communities of Papua New Guinea, Torres Strait and the northeast coast of Queensland. Set against black walls and ceilings, the display cases, maps and text take their colour palette from the blues, greens and yellows of a beachscape. Oceans and waterways are at the heart of these stories, their cultural and economic importance ever present. Yet the movement, entanglement and connection enacted and experienced by these seafaring cultures is sometimes lost amid ambiguous temporalities and static displays. The story the exhibition seeks to tell is one ‘unbounded by western borders’, and from the outset, the deep history and cultural knowledge of First Nations communities is prioritised. Visitors enter the exhibition under a ceiling-light installation of the Tagai constellation, a warrior, leader and fisherman prominent in the creation stories of Torres Strait Islander people. Tagai stretches across the southern sky: his left hand is the Southern Cross, his right hand the constellation Corvus. His stewardship over the entrance helps locate the visitor in place, which is further contextualised by a floor-toceiling map of the region. Dubbed the Coral Sea Interaction Sphere by researchers, the region is made up of more than 100 canoe-based cultural groups whose ancient relationships have been revealed through archaeology. The main exhibition space is occupied by several enormous wooden canoes, a decorative outrigger, and a collection of paddles, Pul [paddle, Tok Pisin language] and Dogai [canoe prow, Kala Lagaw Ya language]. Panels explain that to those who craft and use them, canoes are animate, alive beings, imbued with spiritual meaning and connections. That life is hard to feel when these animate beings lie still and starkly lit in the quiet hall. On the longest wall, a 10-metre digital projection of a Torres Strait Islander outrigger canoe, bobbing steadily on a phantom sea, adds much-needed movement to the display. To its left, a large black and white photo of a Mabuyag Island canoe (Alfred C. Haddon, 1888) placed behind a Bunul [canoe, Gunggay dialect, Yidiny language] shows the true scale of outriggers and their crews. Yet the exhibition