Revisiting Robert Louis Stevenson in the Pacific

Abstract

In this Archive Case display, artists Simon Grennan and Soloman Enos re-examine the work of nineteenth century author Robert Louis Stevenson through dynamic graphic storytelling. Stevenson travelled to several Pacific islands before settling in Sāmoa in 1890. Referencing this time in Sāmoa, as well as Hawai’i and Europe, related items are brought together from the Museum's Pacific collections and displayed alongside historical publications of Stevenson's Pacific stories, set within new graphic remediations of these stories as comics by British and Hawaiian artists. The illustration-led display explores the journey of ideas across media (remediation) in the nineteenth and twenty-first centuries, Robert Louis Stevenson’s fascination with ‘the foreign', and post-colonialism in the Pacific, including new poetry focused on Hawaiian, Samoan and European post-colonialism. The display at the Pitt Rivers Museum celebrates work that is part of a wider research project 'Remediating Stevenson', led by a UK research team (Michelle Keown, Shari Sabeti and Alice Kelly, Edinburgh University; and Simon Grennan, Chester University), in partnership with the National University of Sāmoa. The project explores Robert Louise Stevenson's Pacific fiction, travels, and friendship with Indigenous Pacific communities. The Remediating Robert Louis Stevenson project is producing the first ever multilingual graphic adaptation of the three stories from Robert Louis Stevenson's Island Nights' Entertainments (1893). The project is also commissioning new poetry by indigenous Pacific authors, and developing a set of accompanying teaching resources for use in Sāmoa, Hawai’i and Scotland through participatory arts workshops and film-making.