Ancestral or spiritual table (gope). Kerewa people, Goaribari Island, Papua New Guinea

Ancestral or spiritual tablet (gope). Kerewa people, Goaribari Island, Gulf of Papua, Papua New Guinea. Mid-20th century.
Wood carved in bas-relief and polychromed with pigments.
Provenance: collected in situ by George J. Craig before 1970; private collection, Spain.
It shows wear and loss of polychrome consistent with its age.
Measurements: 269 x 44 x 6 cm.

This monumental gope is an outstanding example of one of the most characteristic sculptural types from the Gulf of Papua, particularly notable for its large size, the complexity of its carving, and the preservation of much of its polychrome decoration. Among the Kerewa people of Goaribari Island, these panels were closely linked to the ritual sphere and to the imunu, spirits associated with specific clans and places in the landscape.

Its composition reflects the artistic language characteristic of these works: on the flat surface of the wood, the bas-relief carving depicts an anthropomorphic face of great expressive power, integrated into a dense structure of geometric and curvilinear motifs. White, reddish, and dark pigments accentuate the relief and visually organize an ornamentation conceived not as an accessory but as an essential part of the spiritual representation.

The gope were traditionally kept in the ceremonial spaces of men’s communal houses, forming part of the shrines of the various clans. The importance of this tradition is widely recognized in major international collections: the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York houses, among other examples, a Kerewa spiritual panel also from the island of Goaribari, dated to the late 19th and early 20th centuries (inv. 1979.206.1682).