In investigating both customary and Modern Pacific art, these collected essays present a wide-ranging view across time and space, taking the reader from antiquities to contemporary art an travelling across the region from Australia, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Island, New Zealand to Samoa. Studies of artefacts and traditions, such as self-portraiture, wood carvings, shields, tapa, dance and masks, use a variety of approaches, some deriving from museum studies while others are based on field investigation. Together they reveal the oppositional tensions between tradition and innovation, and the inspiration this provides for contemporary artistic practice, either through conscious implementation or through rejection of past definitions --