The book is beautifully presented, with excellent colour photographs of many of the works in the exhibition. The text, scholarly and enjoyable, provides an overview of the subject of South-East Asian ancestral art and a valuable record of an important exhibition that, unfortunately, was only shown at one venue. It is a testament to Maxwell’s reputation in the field that eleven lending institutions, repositories of some of the finest art from the region, were prepared to lend highlights from their collections. Works are included from the great ethnographic museums of Europe, and important museum collections in Asia and America. The works recorded in this publication are the jewels of South-East Asian ancestral art. A perusal of the book highlights the fact that the NGA has one of the world’s leading collections of art from the region. As Ron Radford makes clear in his introduction, this is due to Maxwell’s long-standing interest in South-East Asian art and to her dedication to its collection, study, and promotion.

Some of the works that appear in the book will be familiar to readers from earlier NGA exhibitions and catalogues. Many of the textiles, for example, appeared in the exhibitions Sari to Sarong: 500 years of Indian and Indonesian textile exchange (2003) and in Tradition, Trade and Transformation: Textiles of Southeast Asia (1990). However, one of the strengths of Life, Death and Magic is the representation of ancestral art from across mainland and insular South-East Asia in a wide variety of media, including gold, bronze, fibre, wood, stone, bamboo, fur, horn, feathers, and beads. Most of the works have not been seen in Australia before.

The text, admirably, makes sense of these riches by structuring the material within the main themes that inform ancestral art: the village and the ancestral house; fertility; gender; power and wealth; death, funerals, altars, and, of course, magic. Each illustrated work is discussed within its social and ceremonial context. Gradually, continuities within South-East Asian ancestor worship and the overreaching conception of a cosmos inhabited by ancestors, humans, and other-worldly forces become clear. Recurring motifs, sculptural forms, and patterns can be tracked within tribal groups and across regions, and there are some ubiquitous themes such as the dichotomy between the materials used to make ancestral art. Men are associated with hard materials such as metal and wood; women work with soft materials, notably textile fibres.

Highlights include rare material, such as a group of early South-East Asian bronzes created by the lost wax process. Their forms are varied, ranging from a magnificent ceremonial urn from Kalimantan (first–third century ce), decorated with powerful scrolling bands combined with delicate animal forms; a realistic model of a dwelling from the Dian culture of Vietnam, 206 bce–8 ce, illustrating the crossed poles used to construct the massive roof; and the NGA’s sixth-century maternity figure, known as The Bronze Weaver, who sits suckling her baby as she weaves on a backstrap loom. Many of the figurative sculptures in stone and wood have a startling presence. Some are quite unnerving, in particular a pair of ancestor figures made by the Toba Batak people of Sumatra, lent by the National Museum in Jakarta. They embody a transmission of creative energy from artist to object which is inspired by a view of the cosmos that is vastly different from our own. As Maxwell writes in the book’s epilogue, ‘The continued creation of great works of ancestral art in South-East Asia depends not only on mastery of technique, but on the firing of the artists’ vision of the cosmos that inspired their forebears. For the creation of great animist art, the power and magic of the ancestors and the spirit world is as important as ceremonial necessity.’

The book will undoubtedly be reprinted, as it is an excellent resource for those with a scholarly or general interest in the art of South-East Asia, and art related to ancestor worship and animism. Indeed, its importance extends beyond its subject; it is the first to explore the art of South-East Asian ancestor worship through an examination of outstanding works of art, and it also records an exceptional exhibition of works not previously gathered together in Australia. It is a ground-breaking publication that presents an area of Asian art that until recently was overlooked and undervalued.

Criticism of the current edition is restricted to suggesting that the reprint includes some essential research tools that are missing here. A checklist of works in the exhibition, an index, a map showing the location of artist groups, and illustrations referenced in the text would enable the publication to be more easily used as a reference for the study and appreciation of ancestor art of South-East Asia. It is set to become a standard text for the subject, and as such will complement Maxwell’s other seminal publication, Textiles of Southeast Asia: Tradition, Trade and Transformation (1990), as essential reading for anyone with an interest in South-East Asian culture.