Lisa Reihana’s in Pursuit of Venus [infected], 2015–17, is a filmic reimagining of the French panoramic scenic wallpaper Les Sauvages de la Mer Pacifique. Designed by artist Jean-Gabriel Charvet and produced between 1804–05 by French wallpaper manufacturer Joseph Dufour, the wallpaper reflected a widespread fascination in Europe with the Pacific voyages undertaken in the 18th Century by mostly British and French explorers. These Empire building exploits were to bring profound and unwelcome change to the Indigenous peoples across the Pacific.
After being confronted by the widespread historical inaccuracies and cultural misrepresentation of Dufour’s wallpaper, the artist felt strongly compelled to make a work to redress its European point of view. Reihana set about creating a work that replaced the absurd neo-classical figures from Charvet’s wallpaper design, with contemporary filmed vignettes of First Nations Pacific people, to represent their cultural practices as authentically as possible with what James Cook and Joseph Banks would have encountered.
Working collaboratively with specific groups of First Nations people from across the Pacific, and non-indigenous actors portraying the encounters of the British explorers, Reihana created over 70 separately filmed narratives that are seamlessly inserted throughout the vast, gently flowing panoramic video that mirrors Charvet’s Pacific vistas. These unfold within a looping visual and sonic world where time is cyclical and the temporal and spatial dimensionality can be linked to Tā-Vā – the Pacific theory of time and space. In an act of cultural reclamation, the artist re-casts this original European fabrication, to suggest a far more complex story, seen specifically through the eyes of the First Nations people of the Pacific.
Reihana represented New Zealand at the Venice Biennale in 2017 with the large scale video installation in Pursuit of Venus [infected] (2015-17). The work premiered at the Auckland Art Gallery in May 2015 and has since become a seminal work in Aotearoa New Zealand’s art history canon. in Pursuit of Venus [infected] has since been shown around the world and garnered widespread critical acclaim.
Exhibition: 10 February – 16 April 2023
Supported By: A Perth Festival event supported by Visual Arts Program Partner Wesfarmers Arts, and Lotterywest
Presented as part of Perth Festival 2023, a celebration of the John Curtin Gallery’s 25-year partnership with Perth Festival, However vast the darkness… brings together a vivid and compelling season of three interconnected projects offering deep reflection and forceful protest of the inequities suffered by peoples across the globe. It features two major installations by Afghani artist Aziz Hazara, Aotearoa/New Zealand artist Lisa Reihana and Meanjin/Brisbane Aboriginal art collective proppaNOW. Together these artists champion truth-telling as the way to illuminate a path through the darkness of profound geopolitical tension and enduring oppression.
Header Image: Lisa Reihana, Banks Transit of Venus, Mourning, Stars, Sex Trade (detail), 2017, Curtin University Art Collection.
