Happy birthday,

Oceania Centre

Story and picture by PAULINE WALKER

ONE of the University of the South Pacific’s great successes, the Oceania Centre for Arts and Culture, celebrates its second anniver sary this month.

In its short life span, the Oceania Centre has already proved itself a place of serious creativity, attracting and developing young

local talents and pro ducing art in great

variety.

Artists at the Oceania Centre, numbering between thirty and forty indi viduals, have made finely woven pan danus mats, imagina tive metal sculptures and monumental woodcarvings.

They have created a wide range of paintings and draw ings and produced new forms of music and dance.

The centre’s fre quent exhibitions and occasional concerts have introduced these creations to an appreciative audi ence that increases with every event.

The Oceania Centre officially came into being on February 1, 1997, when the University Council appointed Professor Epeli Hau’ofa as director.

Professor Hau’ofa (he prefers ‘Epeli’) had long felt the need for intellectual and artis tic stimulus on the USP campus. He once described it as a “beautiful cemetery - love ly but dead”. So it was “a dream come true”, he recalls, to have the opportunity to devel op a centre of creativity, “not just for the arts but to rekindle original and independent

thinking in this university”.

Installed in nondescript old army bar racks near the bure on USP’s Suva campus, Epeli set out first to establish "the right kind

of environment for the arts, a space con ducive to creativity”. A wide, airy veranda with a distinctively upswept roof trans formed the building and soon became the heart of the centre. Here people could sit and talk, draw, read or dream. Young artists gathered, felt comfortable and stayed.

Additional changes made the Oceania Centre something of a work of art in itself.

Magimagi (sennit) wrapped the veranda’s rafters in rugged designs, both traditional

and new. Broken ceramic tiles covered the passageway’s concrete floor with a swirling mosaic pattern. Beach-loving plants and white sand transformed the exterior into a lush oceanfront scene, which became the

backdrop for magnificent sculptures.

These alterations not only set the place apart visually but gave it a special atmos phere, definitely “conducive to creativity”.

The impact of the Oceania Centre on the visual scene has been matched by its effect on individuals’ lives.

Free extended workshops have attracted aspiring artists, given them materials, and developed their skills. Exhibitions have led to commissions and sales - often the first art-derived income for these young folks.

Epeli also encourages experienced craftsmen to enlarge their horizons, giving huge logs to woodcarvers, giant canvases to painters, a pile of scrap metal to a welder, with a challenge: “do something that’s never been done before”. The results have

been astonishing. “The centre has to make a difference or it should not exist,” says Epeli firmly. “And the differ ence we are looking at here is to encourage and facilitate the emer gence of new forms of creativity, based on our cultural and physical environment”.

Creativity in the arts goes hand-in-hand with creative thinking, he maintains, and so the Centre also sponsors guest lectures on a vari ety of thought-provok

ing topics.

His goal?

“We want to carve a niche where indepen dent thinking and inde pendent creations are distinctively ours, dis

tinctively Oceanic,

original rather than imi tation”. As the Oceania Centre for Arts and Culture embarks on its third year, Epeli hopes that the physical facilities will some day match the

Centre’s aims and activities. They need more workspace, proper storage for their art collection, a gallery and performance space.

Meanwhile, he remarks, “One of the guiding principles of our centre is that, as much as possible, we make do with what we have. Not just make do, but USE whatever we have, however small, and produce really good work”.

In the brief period of two years, that is exactly what the Oceania Centre has done.

Many happy returns, Oceania! ■

The Oceania Centre’s wide, airy verandah with a distinctly upswept roof transformed the old army barracks. The Centre will be two years old on February 1