Top venue for New Zealand’s acclaimed 2017 Venice Biennale artist

A historic naval warehouse in the heart of the Arsenale exhibition complex at the Venice Art Biennale in 2017 will be the venue for Lisa Reihana’s media-based exhibition Emissaries which will include her acclaimed work in Pursuit of Venus [infected]. 

The New Zealand pavilion will be housed in the Tesa dell'Isolotto, one of the oldest buildings in the Arsenale, among many permanent national pavilions and part of the biennale’s curated exhibition. The stand-alone building is one of the more prominent buildings at the end of the Arsenale in an area where visitors and journalists congregate.

Emissaries will incorporate her panoramic video in Pursuit of Venus [infected], expanded and augmented with a series of new photographic works.

in Pursuit of Venus [infected] is a 25m long 4m high-scrolling video work (viewing takes about 30 minutes), which was exhibited at the Auckland Art Gallery last year and attracted a large audience.

The work is based on scenic wallpaper panels produced in France in 1804 that were inspired by Pacific voyages undertaken by various 18th-century navigators. It features a number of historical incidents as recorded by Captain James Cook and other explorers.

Commissioner Alastair Carruthers says selecting a venue early was crucial as few spaces are suitable for the artist’s large-scale audiovisual immersive project. He says, “Tesa dell'Isolotto’s location in a shipyard offers new possibilities for Reihana’s exhibition as she develops it for the Venice environment.” 

“We are very fortunate to have found space in the Arsenale, where hundreds of thousands of visitors come to experience the best contemporary art from around the globe. This will be the first time the New Zealand pavilion is within the Biennale’s official exhibition area.”

He says, “The Arsenale is the magnificent historic shipyard of Venice, a naval basin that still operates and a place where ocean ready sailing vessels were built – at a rate of one per day.”

Ms Reihana says, “Isolotta means ‘island’ and I’m very interested in the relevance of that, and of the location’s history as I develop this exhibition. Transported half a world away we will be new emissaries to Venice.”

Arts Council Chairman Dr Dick Grant says the Venice Biennale  provides a huge opportunity for international exposure for New Zealand art and artists. "It presents New Zealand as an assured country confidently taking its place on the world cultural stage. Each year, as we build on the success of previous exhibitions, our presence becomes more anticipated.”

The Venice Art Biennale is widely recognised as one of the major international art exhibitions in the world. In 2015 almost 90 countries had a presence – and the Biennale attracted more than 8000 accredited journalists and 500,000 visitors. 

New Zealand’s presence there has provided career development opportunity for New Zealand contemporary visual artists. It brings the New Zealand pavilion to the attention of global media, art institutions, experts and gallerists and offers professional development opportunities for the curators and others associated with the project.

Ms Reihana’s work has featured in significant international exhibitions including the Havana Biennale, the Brooklyn Museum, the Liverpool Biennale, the Asia Society Museum in New York, the 12th Biennale of Sydney, and the Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, Brisbane.

She was made an arts laureate by the New Zealand Arts Foundation in 2014 and has recently been shortlisted for the 2016 Walters Prize for in Pursuit of Venus [infected].

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