Ocula Conversation Bani Abidi: ‘What you see in my films is what I know’ A group of voices accompanies me in the exhibition. They are singing words I cannot comprehend, yet the warm tunes are familiar: folk songs, love songs, songs of longing. There are letters, too. They speak of the quotidian details of a soldier's life: the hardness of the war, sending money to the family, and longing for familiar landscapes, food,...
Ocula Report Aichi to Okayama: Art in Japan Looks to the Future 11 Oct 2019 : Stephanie Bailey for Ocula There has been a flurry of triennial and biennial art activity in Japan this year. The Aichi Triennale opened in Nagoya this August, sparking a national debate about the shutting down of a display of formerly censored works—the result of public backlash against a burnt image of Emperor Hirohito and a statue commemorating the women forced into...
Ocula Insight | Video Hans Hartung and Art Informel at Mazzoleni London (1 October 2019-18 January 2020) presents key works by the French-German painter while highlighting his connection with artists active in Paris during the 50s and 60s. In this video, writer and historian Alan Montgomery discusses Hartung's practice and its legacy.Born in Leipzig in 1904, Hans...
Lisa Reihana is a multi-disciplinary artist of Maori (Nga Puhi) descent who has contributed in powerful ways to multimedia, photography, sculpture and screen culture in Aotearoa, New Zealand.
Reihana has earned an outstanding reputation as an artist, producer and cultural interlocutor of tremendous generosity and intelligence. Her attention to the complexities of contemporary photographic and filmic languages is expressed in myriad ways. Her ability to harness and manipulate seductively high production values is often expressed through portraiture and cinematic realms where the artist often enlists family and friends as models.
Reihana has an extensive exhibition history including her solo exhibition Native Portraits at MLAC, Italy, Global Feminisms, Brooklyn Museum; the Asia-Pacific Triennial, Queensland Art Gallery, Australia; the Liverpool Biennale, UK; Pasifika Styles, Cambridge, UK. Digital Marae shown at Govett-Brewster Gallery in New Plymouth 2007 was shortlisted for the Walters Prize 2008 and Anne Landa Art Award, AGNSW, Sydney. Digital Marae 2001- employs large scale photography, short videos and aural soundscapes to create an environment which is a culturally rich meditation on Maori in modern times. This work has been shown extensively and continues to garner international renown. The complex works comprising Mai i te aroha, ko te aroha [From love, comes love] 2008 commissioned by Te Papa Tongarewa include multi-screen videos, sculpture and textiles.
Kupenga Design [Lisa Reihana + Henriatta Nicholas] were awarded the VPT Maori Commissions with in Auckland, Reihana completed the Public Art Commission Rangimarie Last Dance at Q Theatre in 2011. The Matariki outdoor projections - Whetu i te rangi were awarded to Reihana in 2010, and were screened at Corbans Estate and Bruce Mason Theatre.
Reihana's work is held in private and public collections including Te Papa Tongarewa, Wellington; Auckland Art Gallery, Auckland; Australia National Gallery, Canberra; Staatliche Museum, Berlin; Susan O'Connor Foundation, Texas and Brooklyn Museum, New York. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Elam School of Fine Arts, Auckland University and a Masters in Design from UNITEC School of Visual Art and Design.
Ocula Conversation Lisa Reihana Artist, New Zealand The Auckland artist Lisa Reihana has recently opened her most ambitious project to date: in Pursuit of Venus (infected), a filmic animation that has been six years in the making. Projected across a panorama of mutliple screens at the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, Reihana’s lushly rendered film ‘reanimates’ the picturesque...
Related Press The first 33 artists in 2020 Biennale of Sydney: NIRIN Art Guide Australia : 10 April 2019 Brook Andrew's grandmother was forbidden to speak her Wiradjuri tongue. 'People need to understand there were generations of genocide in this country,' the artist and first Indigenous Australian artistic director of the 22nd Biennale of Sydney (which will take place across six Sydney sites in 2020) tells Art Guide Australia. 'And it takes time,...
Related Press The surprising links between Brexit and Oceania art exhibition New Zealand Herald : 20 October 2018 The Telegraph described it as an "ambitious and astonishing exhibition" while Guardian art critic Jonathan Jones declared he didn't just like the art but wanted to live in the world it portrays. He also speculated that modernist masters like Picasso were more influenced by Oceanic art than we might have previously realised.The opening...
Related Press 11 national pavilions and exhibition to see at the 57th Venice Biennale in 2017 Art Radar Journal : 23 May 2017 Rock, Paper, Scissors: Positions in Play — United Arab EmiratesCurated by Hammad Nasar, commissioned by the Salama bint Hamdan Al Nahyan Foundation and supported by the UAE Ministry of Culture and Knowledge Development, the exhibition features existing, new commissions and re-fabrications of 'lost' works by five UAE-based artists. The show...
Related Press The best art unveiled at the 2017 Venice Biennale The Denizen : 17 May 2017 The 57th edition of the world's most important art exhibition, the Venice Biennale, has, in the past week, seen no end of impressive works unveiled by the world's most important and progressive artists. The six-month showcase (which ends on 26th November) serves as a trip around the world, one that uses a series of 'national' pavilions to exhibit a...
Related Video & Audio QAGOMA secures major work by Lisa Reihana QAGOMA : 4 October 2015 The Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA) has announced the acquisition of the striking four-channel video work, in Pursuit of Venus [infected] 2015, following the success of the 2015 QAGOMA Foundation Appeal.The important work by renowned New Zealand artist Lisa Reihana offers a contemporary, creative response to the popular...
