Mathias Kauage painting of a Qantas plane full of travellers, with Queen Elizabeth II and flags

Contemporary Painting in Papua New Guinea: Mathias Kauage and His Family

Now showing30 March 2024 – 23 May 2027$25

Boldly coloured paintings by Mathias Kauage and his family, charting Papua New Guinea's changes before and after independence in 1975.

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On now All of October 2026

At the bottom left of one canvas, Queen Elizabeth II waits in her red coat and cockade hat, her handbag repainted as a bilum, the fibre bag women carry in Papua New Guinea. Mathias Kauage put himself in the same picture twice: beside the Qantas pilot, and in full regalia, flying to the opening of Glasgow's Gallery of Modern Art in 1996.

It is four paintings in Gallery 31, from the de Young's collection and none shown before. Only one is by Kauage, whom the National Gallery of Australia called Papua New Guinea's best-known contemporary artist. The rest are by the family who kept painting in his style: his wife Elizabeth and his adopted son Apa Hugo. Hugo's titles are long Tok Pisin captions. You read one as a story: a wife is diagnosed with AIDS, and her husband beats her when they get home. The museum flags it for domestic violence.

Four canvases make this a short stop. General admission covers it: $25, free for 17 and under.

Look for

Kauage Flies to Scotland for Opening of New Museum of Contemporary Art (1999)
A Qantas plane full of travellers flies from the Southern Cross to the north, past Australian and PNG flags, with the Queen and her bilum bag waiting below.
Elizabeth Kauage, One-legged woman & her piglet (2008)
Painted for a women's art show in Canberra, it shows a one-legged, unmarried woman who works her vegetable and coffee gardens and raises a piglet.
Apa Hugo, Elekopta Karim ol Pasindias igo Long Pogera Gold Mine (2006)
Three Highlands women in feathered regalia ride a helicopter to the Porgera gold mine, which local people were protesting around the time it was painted.