ARTventures: Art and Life in the Contemporary Pacific

Abstract

The unpublished work ARTventures: Art and Life in the Contemporary Pacific is a literary memoir recounting Susan Cochrane’s unorthodox life as a roaming curator of contemporary Pacific art. The narrative intertwines vignettes of the author’s personal life with her experiences as a “poken” (slang  for English-speaking foreigner) in New Caledonia; on fieldwork trips collecting art in remote areas of Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, and Vanuatu; and encountering Māori and Pasifika artists in Aotearoa New Zealand, and Aboriginal Taiwanese in Taiwan. The text is subtly layered with insights into the attitudes and operations of the art world and strategies to establish Indigenous art in its own right.