Opening 27th November, the National Gallery of Victoria will present a beautiful selection of over thirty barkcloths in Wisdom of the Mountain: Art of the Omie, the Gallery's first exhibition of contemporary art from Papua New Guinea.

The Omie, a small tribe of less than 2000 people, live on the steep, south-eastern slopes of Mount Lamington, Oro Province in Papua New Guinea.

The art of making barkcloths (nioge) is practised exclusively by Omie women and is created from the inner bark of the paper mulberry tree which has been softened into thin sheets by a process of beating.

Each nioge is formed using materials from the mountainous rainforest homeland of the Omie.