Oceania 11


REIMAGINING THE REGION FROM AN INDIGENOUS PERSPECTIVE


IN THE FILM, LISA REIHANA SET ABOUT


Les Sauvages de la mer Pacifique (1805), JeanGabriel Charvet (designer), Joseph Dufour et Cie (printer and publisher), panels 1 to 10 and 11 to 20, woodblock, printed in colour inks, from multiple blocks, handpainted gouache through stencils, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra


While not considering herself a


technological language that could cope with the extraordinary amount of data that she would need to assemble to bring the work to fruition.


‘I have been working on this largely self-funded project for 11 years, and technology was developing while I was making the work. I needed to constantly check that what I was doing was actually working. It took a really long time to work out how to make the film and to develop both the technical and ethical language. I wanted to get the sense in the work that things were happening through time,’ she explained. Reihana set about reimagining the


region from an indigenous perspective. She used Cook’s journals and translated them into visual scenes that could be performed by actors, who were then filmed and the images were superimposed onto the wallpaper’s landscape backgrounds that were augmented by specially drawn,


illustrations. Her ultimate goal was to ‘to help people to reconsider history and (develop) a new way of looking at the past,’ she said. Te result is an extraordinary work that brings together


acting, animation and a


degree of historical accuracy in a heterogeneous package that is also aesthetically pleasing while not being overbearingly didactic in tone. In 2015, Reihana was invited to show In Pursuit of Venus in the New


In Pursuit of Venus (infected) at the Campbelltown Arts Centre, Sydney, showing Joseph Banks working on botanical drawings with HMS Endeavour anchoted at sea in the background


political radical Reihana’s practice, photography, film and installations, has always addressed the iniquitous legacy of the colonial gaze and how it plays out on racial and cultural identities in New Zealand. Her mission over many years has been to rectify her homeland’s history and the imbalance between fact and fiction. Reihana’s In Pursuit, a reworking of Les Sauvages de la Mer Pacifique, has proven to be the ideal vehicle for these concerns. In Pursuit is a deeply engaging expression of Reihana’s goal of rectifying her homeland’s history which invites viewers to reassess attitudes toward Maori, Aboriginal, and Pacific culture through a reinterpretation of early imagery in a region where colonialism is now a euphemism for the theft of land and exploitation of people and natural resources. Reihana’s astonishing film disrupts the depicted notions of the Pacific region as an exotic wonderland and introduces an alternative narrative of confusing


encounters that often


resulted in unexpurgated violence committed by colonial adventurers upon an indigenous population, a population that produced an extraordinary range of sophisticated art as Oceania more than demonstrates. While Oceania might skirt round


this aspect of colonialisation in the southern seas its focus on the extraordinary flowering of art and culture from a region that occupies a third of the earth’s surface, demonstrates


how civilisations


continue to flourish even when under extreme duress. Te films are now on their own


world-wide journey. Not bad for an artist whose only exposure to London’s Royal Academy of Arts, until last year, was watching actor Timothy Spall as Turner in the film, Mr Turner (2014).


stylistically compatible,


Zealand Pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale. Te government money backing the project gave her the breathing space to quit her art teaching job and concentrate full time on making and enhancing the film. At Venice the work was a runaway success. Te extended version of the film is


on show at the Royal Academy in Oceania


(29 September to 10


December) was 33 minutes in length when it was originally shown in


Auckland and Brisbane in 2015. Tis version chronicles the meetings between Europeans and the indigenous Pacific Islanders and includes several delicate scenes such as when a British soldier, in the distinctive red coat of the period, attempts to win the hand of an indigenous woman. But there are moments of savagery, too, muskets are aimed arbitrarily while marines lounge back drinking. Other scenes


have Cook looking through his sextant and Banks creating his botanical drawings. We also witness Cook’s death at the hands of a Pacific Islander on the island of Hawaii, and the eventual return to the European adventurers of some 6-8 pounds of thigh flesh, (Cook’s body had been disposed of by a custom that showed respect rather than designed to cause offence – in rituals due to a high chief at death).


• In Pursuit of Venus is at Toulouse Contemporary Art Festival in France (21 Sept-28 Oct), the 9th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art in Brisbane (24 November-28 April 2019). In 2019, it is at the Adelaide Arts Festival (15 February-12 April), and the Honolulu Museum of Art (28 February 28-14 July). • Te exhibition Oceania, including In Pursuit, moves to Musée Quai Branly in Paris (12 March-7 July 2019)


SEPTEMBER 2018 ASIAN ART


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