Lisa Reihana: Emissaries
3 February – 29 April 2018
3 February – 29 April 2018
Widely acclaimed as the standout exhibition from the 2017 Venice Biennale,
Lisa Reihana: Emissaries comes to Western Australia for Perth Festival 2018.
Imperialism’s gaze is returned with a speculative twist that disrupts notions of beauty, authenticity, history and myth. The exhibition unravels Enlightenment ideals, cartographic and scientific endeavour, and the raw, ever-present impulses of expansionism, power and desire.
John Curtin Gallery Director Chris Malcolm said the Gallery was privileged to display such an important work to mark the Gallery’s 20th Anniversary.
“The Gallery is delighted to present Lisa Reihana’s outstanding work during Perth Festival in 2018. It is very rare for work to attract such universal praise so I am very happy that Perth audiences will have the opportunity to experience one of the most stunning artworks produced by any artist in the world over the last few years”, he said.
Lisa Reihana: Emissaries, presented in partnership with Perth Festival, celebrates the John Curtin Gallery’s 20th Anniversary since opening on Curtin University’s Bentley campus in 1998 as Australia’s largest University Art Museum.
The exhibition will be supported by a public program that includes artists floortalks and public lectures by celebrated scientists Professor Steven Tingay, Director of Curtin’s Institute for Radio Astronomy and Professor Kingsley Dixon, Botanist and 2016 WA Scientist of the Year.
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Lisa Reihana is one of New Zealand’s most innovative contemporary artists.
With a career spanning three decades. Spanning film, sound, photography, spatial design, live-action, costume and sculptural form, her work is found has featured in significant museums and major exhibition projects including the Yinchuan Biennial, the Havana Biennial, the Noumea Biennale, the Liverpool Biennial, the Adelaide International at Samstag Museum, the 12th Biennale of Sydney, the 2nd Auckland Triennial at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, and the the 2nd and 4th Asia Pacific Triennials of Contemporary Art at Queensland Art Gallery Reihana’s work was recently included in the inaugural Honolulu Biennial 2017, a multi-site, contemporary visual arts festival.
in Pursuit of Venus [infected]
Lisa Reihana: Emissaries features 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 employs 21st century digital technologies to recast and reconsider the wallpaper from a Pacific perspective. Enlivened with the sights and sounds of performance, cultural ceremonies and encounters, the expansive video panorama is populated by known and invented narratives of encounter amongst the British navigators and astronomers and people drawn from across Aotearoa New Zealand and the Pacific.
