Pioneer Arts stage 3 (13th January, 2010)

Contemporary Arts is an aspect of art creation that began in the mid-seventies by four pioneer artists namely; Mathias Kauage, Timothy Akis, Jakupa Ako and David Lalasi.

This form of art, interestingly, gives us unique insight into life there through as a new medium. These men were the first artists in PNG to exhibit their work in a western sense. They opened the door to a growing number of younger people who paint and sculpt as members of a global group of indigenous artists, some of whom, through scholarships, have studied in many other areas of the Pacific.

The Post PNG Philatelic Bureau is honored to present in its first stamp issue for 2010 the work of another pioneer artist; Jakupa Ako.

Jakupa Ako (known as Jakupa) is also the recipient of an O.B.E, awarded in 1981. Born about 1942 in the Bena Bena region of the Eastern Highlands, his career as an artist began when he worked as a janitor in the newly opened Teachers' College at Goroko when he began to paint alongside enrolled students. Because his work showed great imagination, Tom Craig, the head of Expressive Arts, offered him a scholarship to Creative Arts Center (later renamed the National Arts School) when Craig became its first director in 1972.

Like Kauage, Jakupa is a lively chronicler of village and town life. His images are based on stories of local village myths or the life he sees around him. His love of color, coupled with his use of lively organic shapes, has created a strong rhythmic quality to his work that recalls the repetitive beat of traditional Highland dance.