Lisa Reihana

National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

NOW CLOSED

In Pursuit of Venus

Lisa Reihana’s In pursuit of Venus is a two-channel, live-action video that is inspired by the colonial 19th-century panoramic wallpaper, Les Sauvages de la Mer Pacifique (1804–05), produced by entrepreneur Joseph Dufour in Neoclassical France. Les Sauvages draws upon journal accounts of Pacific voyages of exploration but Dufour and his team harvested information from different historical sources and relocated the bodies into a fictional Tahitian landscape, removing these Pacific Islanders from their cultural, historical and political reality and dressing them in Neoclassical attire. Read more.

Event website