2017 - Lisa Reihana
Lisa Reihana. Photo: John McIver.
Core Team Members
Commissioner: Alastair Carruthers
CNZM Curator: Rhana Devenport
Project Director: Jude Chambers
Exhibition Attendants
Talei Si‘ilata, Jaenine Parkinson, Zoe Hoeberigs, Julia Craig, Hannah Murray, Claire Chamberlain
Project Publication Lisa Reihana: Emissaries
Director and commissioning editor: Rhana Devenport
Contributing writers: Witi Ihimaera, Rhana Devonport, Nikos Papastergiadis, Anne Salmond, Jens Hoffmann, Brook Andrew, Vivienne Webb, Keith Moore, Megan Tamati-Quennell
Editor: Clare McIntosh
Publication management: Catherine Hammond
Designer: Philip Kelly Studio
Publisher: Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki
Lisa Reihana’s exhibition for the Biennale Arte 2017 returned imperialism’s gaze with a speculative twist that disrupted notions of beauty, authenticity, history and myth.
Lisa Reihana: Emissaries unravelled Enlightenment ideals, cartographic and scientific endeavour, and the raw, ever-present impulses of expansionism, power and desire. Presented in the Arsenale’s Tese dell’Isolotto, the exhibition featured the artist’s vast panoramic video in Pursuit of Venus [infected], 2015—17, alongside interrelated photo-based and sculptural works.
in Pursuit of Venus [infected] is a cinematic re-imagining of the French scenic wallpaper Les Sauvages De La Mer Pacifique, 1804—1805, also known as ‘Captain Cook’s voyages’. Two hundred years later – and almost 250 years after the original voyages that inspired them – Reihana employed twenty-first century digital technologies to recast and reconsider the wallpaper from a Pacific perspective.
Reihana presented portraits of two key figures from in Pursuit of Venus [infected] as emissaries: the Chief Mourner from the Society Islands who moves between worlds, and Joseph Banks, the ambitious naturalist/astronomer who documented the Transit of Venus on Cook’s first voyage. A constellation of sculptural works literally telescoped in on moments of encounter and wonder.
Generously supported by: Te Papa Tongarewa (key partner), Auckland Art Gallery (presenting partner), Leigh Melville and the New Zealand at Venice Patrons, Allpress Espresso (supporting sponsor), The Royal Society (supporting sponsor), Black Estate Wines (hospitality sponsor), Peter Gordon.
in Pursuit of Venus [infected], 2015–17 will be shown in Campbelltown Art Centre in Sydney from January 2018. In February 2018 Perth’s John Curtin Gallery will exhibit Lisa Reihana: Emissaries as part of the Perth International Arts Festival. in Pursuit of Venus [infected], 2015–17 will also be exhibited by the Royal Academy of Arts in London in 2018 as part of a major survey of the arts of Oceania marking its 250th anniversary. In 2019 the panoramic video will be presented at the Musée du quai Branly - Jacques Chirac, Paris, as part of their Océanie exhibition.
More on the artist
Lisa Reihana (b. 1964) lives and works in Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand.
Reihana (Ngā Puhi, Ngāti Hine, Ngāi Tu) is at the forefront of experimentation and has helped forge time-based and media art in Aotearoa New Zealand. Her technically ambitious and poetically nuanced work disrupts gender, time, power and representational norms. Reihana’s work spans film, sound, photography, spatial design, live-action, costume and sculptural form. Her art making is driven by a powerful connection to community which informs her collaborative working method described as kanohi ki te kanohi (face to face).
Her work has featured in significant museums and major exhibition projects around the world, including Brooklyn Museum, the Yinchuan Biennial, the Havana Biennial, the Noumea Biennale, the Liverpool Biennial, the inaugural Honolulu Biennial, the Adelaide International at Samstag Museum, the 12th Biennale of Sydney, the 2nd Auckland Triennial at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, the 2nd and 4th Asia Pacific Triennials of Contemporary Art at Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, Asia Society Museum (New York), Museum Van Loon (Amsterdam), imagineNATIVE Film & Media Arts Festival (Toronto), Gyeonggi Museum of Modern Art (South Korea), and Museum Fridericianum (Kassel).
She was shortlisted for the Signature Art Prize at the Singapore Art Museum in 2014 for in Pursuit of Venus; as well as for Double Take, the Anne Landa Award, Art Gallery of New South Wales in 2009 and The Walters Prize at the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki in 2008, both for Digital Marae. She was shortlisted for The Walters Prize 2016 for in Pursuit of Venus [infected], 2015.
Reihana was made an Arts Laureate by the New Zealand Arts Foundation in 2014, and has received the Te Tohu Toi Kē Te Waka Toi Māori Arts Innovation Award from Creative New Zealand. Reihana was named a 2017 Distinguished Alumni by the University of Auckland, in recognition of her outstanding achievement in the field of fine arts.
Reihana completed a Masters in Design from the School of Visual Art and Design, Unitec in Auckland in 2014 and graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Elam School of Fine Arts, University of Auckland in 1987.
![“in Pursuit of Venus [infected]”, 2015–17, “Lisa Reihana: Emissaries”, Biennale Arte 2017. Photo: Michael Hall.](https://www.nzatvenice.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/5.jpg)
![Lisa Reihana, detail “in Pursuit of Venus [infected]”, 2015–17, Ultra HD video, colour, sound, 64 min. Image courtesy of the artist.](https://www.nzatvenice.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/3.jpg)
![Lisa Reihana, detail “in Pursuit of Venus [infected]”, 2015–17, Ultra HD video, colour, sound, 64 min. Image courtesy of the artist.](https://www.nzatvenice.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/2.jpg)