Lisa Reihana ‘Wharema Triptych: from In Pursuit of Venus’

After ten years of visual research a version of Lisa Reihana’s two-channel video work Pursuit of Venus was staged as New Zealand’s presentation in 2017 for the 57th Venice Biennale. A similar version was presented the following year at the Royal Academy of Arts in the Oceania exhibition in London. Some technical specifications included the display of a trillion pixels in a moving image some 24 metres long, 4 metres high using 5 projectors and some 20 speakers. Other locations of varying scales were presented in New Zealand, Australia and Canada.

In preparation for the Venice presentation, a series of still photographic images were commissioned—some were editioned and others such as the current Wharema Triptych: from In Pursuit of Venus were unique prints that were designed to underpin a rich cultural history that Reihana embodied in the larger video work.

The origins of In Pursuit of Venus may be traced to Lisa Reihana’s 2005 visit to Australia’s National Gallery to view an exhibition of video works by American artist Bill Viola. These sumptuous and immersive videos engaged slow motion techniques to highlight the emotional impact of the performers. In a striking contrast, in a nearby space Reihana viewed the Enlightenment-era wallpaper Les Sauvages de la Mer Pacifique, 1804–5, by Jean-Gabriel Charvet. This piece, comprising some twenty panels, engulfed ten metres of wall space. The depicted Polynesian figures were draped in apparently Hellenic costumes and adopted classical poses for the approval of contemporary audiences rather than for their dismay. The figures illustrated and acted out excerpts from the voyaging journals of explorers Cook, de Bougainville and La Perouse. Surprised and apparently unnerved by this depiction, Reihana immediately set about a research process to bring a post-colonial view to the representation of Pacific people at the time of European contact. The generalised title In Pursuit of Venus of works created in the following decade refers to James Cook’s 1769 voyage to Tahiti to specifically record the transit of Venus in the Enlightenment project to measure the earth-sun distance through the calculations of the Astronomer Royal, Edmond Halley. This titling also engages with romantic overtones of how the Pacific was viewed and exotically represented at that moment of first contact with Pacific Islander people.

Reihana set about engaging actors and meticulously costuming them in what we would now regard as clothing from the period of first contact. Using the actors she filmed multiple cameo performances scripted from recorded incidents in the journals from the voyages of Cook and others. To make Charvet’s ‘wallpaper’ concept come alive, these vignettes were inserted into a moving background of slowed time that moved from right to left, so that the projected final ‘wallpaper’ image gave the impression that the viewer could walk past and observe live events as they occurred in real time. The soundtrack from authentic ceremonial offerings with incidental music, voice and environmental noise enhanced the viewing experience, creating a sense of being outside, engulfed en plein air. The result is an art-historically epic video projection that has all the emotionally immersive qualities of Bill Viola’s moving image masterpieces. His are naturally international, but Reihana’s Venus is a document that re-visions our part of the world with an outward-looking post-colonial message so that it becomes international.

The Wharema Triptych is a large-scale three panel work from the period leading up to the video presentation at the Venice Biennale. It was commissioned for placement in the 1887 Remuera residence ‘Wharema’, originally owned by E W Payton, the first principal of Elam School of Art in Auckland. This major photographic work captures the interlacing of the actors, their gestures and their costuming with the idealised background landscape—so idealised that it becomes universal of all Pacific locales. The multiple still photographic images mirror the intent of the multiple panels of Charvet’s original wallpaper. The black borders hint at a serialisation of images that are presented one after the other in traditional celluloid film. The artist figure in the central panel, perhaps Sydney Parkinson, William Hodges or John Webber from Cook’s first, second or third voyages ironically records the dress of a ceremonial dancer using a child’s watercolour paintbox.

For this writer, the overwhelming memory of seeing the Royal Academy version of In Pursuit of Venus was the experience of the audience engagement. People stopped, looked carefully and engaged deeply with the slow time being presented. The audience thronged and never abated. They moved along slowly with the unfurling of new vignettes as the background (and time) passed. The work continues to keep conversations wide open about life in the Pacific in a post-colonial world.

Peter James Smith