I love it when someone is so struck by a piece of artwork they’re compelled to tell everyone they know about it.
Rather appropriately, on the wall above our Prime Minister and Minister for Culture and Heritage was an image by one of our most valued and loved artists, Lisa Reihana MNZM (Ng-apuhi, Ng-ati Hine, Ngai Tu).
It is a large, still image taken from Lisa’s celebrated video work in Pursuit of Venus (infected), which was shown to record audience numbers at Auckland Art Gallery in 2015 and has since toured the world to critical acclaim.
The 32 minute video loop opens up much more complex narratives around Cook’s exploration of the Pacific and interaction with Pacifica peoples than the colonial version of events. Lisa took a twenty-panel scenic wallpaper, Les Sauvages de la Mer Pacifique, made in France in 1804 and which depicted Voltaire’s idea of the Noble Savage, as her mise en scene.
Using sophisticated digital techniques, Lisa animated that vista and populated it with Polynesian and European protagonists interacting in intricate and nuanced ways. The linear, romanticized depiction of first contacts is replaced with a more realistic, human series of exchanges, both benign and violent.
The still image at Open Café has, at its centre, a cultural exchange. European sailors are having kirituhi (moko for non-Maori) performed on them. Tattoos were usual for sailors, and this commonality represents a positive conversation between them and their hosts. The depiction of a meeting of strangers with the exchange of ideas, coming together through shared experience rather than antagonistic difference, is perfect for our everyday meeting house: the café.
The image is also suited to our current political and social situation, where we need to accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative. We are all complex stories, not idealized stereotypes. (Evan Woodruffe/Studio Art Supplies)
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