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Deborah Gare highlights how Lisa Reihana’s In Pursuit of Venus (2015) explores how art can be used for historical interpretation.

Image courtesy of interviewee. March 28, 2024

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This video video discusses the relationship between art, imagination, and history, exploring how visual evidence—such as art and architecture—can deepen our understanding of the past and challenge established historical narratives. A key focus is the role of artists, who may not only record history but also create it, highlighted through a discussion of the Tudor artist Hans Holbein and the impact of his portraits on historical perception, particularly of Henry VIII.

The conversation then shifts to the work of New Zealand artist Lisa Reihana, specifically her exhibition "The Pursuit of Venus Infected." This video video work is a digital reinterpretation of 19th-century wallpaper that reflects European exploration in the Pacific. Reihana's piece challenges traditional historical narratives by incorporating authentic representations of Pacific Islander cultures and experiences, capturing a perspective often overlooked in historical texts and accounts.

Further, the text references historical artists like Francisco Goya, who embodied the role of the artist as historian through their powerful depictions of significant events, allowing audiences to connect emotionally with history. Reihana's work similarly aims to present the lived experiences of Pacific Islanders, contrasting the Eurocentric narratives often found in historical accounts.

Overall, the text advocates for the importance of imagination and artistic expression in filling gaps left by textual historical records, thus providing a richer understanding of past experiences.

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X-TIMESTAMP-MAP:LOCAL=00:00:00.000,MPEGTS=900000

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My colleagues and I, were working, by this time,

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or had been working for some time on the idea of,

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imagination and history

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and the way in which visual evidence like art,

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could help us understand the past

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and could help us even contest ideas of history, you know,

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the established historical narratives.

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How could art or architecture

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or other forms of visual evidence help us understand,

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you know, more deeply the, the complex lived realities of,

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of communities and societies in the past?

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Um, we, we were playing around a lot with, the question

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of the degree to which an artist

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might also be recording history,

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or even in some cases making history.

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Um, to what degree might an artist sometimes be a historian?

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And we, we often talk to undergraduate

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and postgraduate students in our classes about the idea

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of artists making history or artists recording history.

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And there were some really interesting examples

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that we used to think about.

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Um, one was, I, I know your listeners will be very familiar

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with, the story of Henry VII and his many wives.

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And if you could imagine Henry VIII in your mind,

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what does he look like to you?

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Can you see him, like, literally,

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can you tell me what he looks like?

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And the reason you and I are thinking

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almost exactly the same picture of Henry VIII is

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because of the, the extraordinary

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and the enduring power of the artist Holbein, who was part

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of his court, who was capturing the record of Henry viii,

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his wives, you know, the aristocracy around them and so on.

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Um, and Holbein was an artist that, as I said, was attached

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to the court of the Tudors.

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And at one point was sent over to Europe when,

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the king was considering another marriage

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to Anne of Cleaves.

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And Anne of Cleaves was, is now understood

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to have been perhaps a little on the plain side,

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but Holbein was sent over by government to go,

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you better make a look as attractive as possible

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as a prospect for the king.

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And he comes home to London with

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or to the, to the king's court with this portrait of this,

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very serious looking young woman,

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but still a very beautiful, gracious portrait, dressed up,

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you know, enhanced.

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She, her looks were enhanced by the beautiful clothing

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and jewelry that he put on her and so on.

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And so the king, you know, accepted

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the marriage essentially on the face value of the portrait

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that the artist had created.

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And then when he saw her in reality, you know, the, the,

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the story, the legend, is that he immediately, you know,

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considered that she didn't live up to the promise

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of the artists, you know, rendering.

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And the marriage was doomed from the beginning.

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And we all know what happened to Anna Cleves, which is

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that the marriage didn't last, though she wasn't executed.

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Um, and so that's a really interesting example of

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Not just an artist who was capturing history,

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but in this instance, an artist who was making history.

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He was part of the, the story of the Tudor wives, right?

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So, you know, my colleagues

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and I, we, we thought a lot about the idea in which art can

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tell stories of the past,

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and the role of the artist in that.

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And then in the middle of this is a very long way

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of answering your question, Sam, about the work

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that we've done on the Lisa Rehana piece.

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In the middle of this work

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that we were doing together on art

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and the past, a new exhibition rolled into our,

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our hometown, Sam, I'm in Perth in Western Australia.

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We are the most isolated city in the world, right?

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Literally Perth is, is Perth is closer to Singapore

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and Bali than it is to Sydney or Canberra or Melbourne.

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We're a long way from everywhere.

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And in the middle of, you know, this work

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that we were doing, this new exhibition roles into Perth of,

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Lisa Han's work called, the Pursuit

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of Venus Infected.

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And it was this extraordinary digital reimagining

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of a very early 19th century wallpaper created by,

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a French, artist

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and designer, well manufacturer,

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really in the south of France.

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And she retold digitally

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and visually retold the story of European exploration

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and encounters in the Pacific in the 18th century.

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And so that gave us another really interesting way into

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thinking about, you know,

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is Lisa Han is an artist who's contesting,

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historical narratives,

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but she's also helping us imagine more of the historical

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or the lived experience than what other forms

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of historical records can help us with.

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So yeah, that, that was like the context

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of the project that we did.

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It's, it's a really, really interesting work.

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Um, the, wallpaper manufacturer was Joseph dfo.

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He was, operating out of France in the late 18th

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and early 19th century, so say 1790s to the 1810, you know,

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that were, were probably his peak period of production.

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Um, and,

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the company DFO created a work,

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an extraordinary panoramic wallpaper called Les

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Pacific, the Natives of the Pacific Ocean.

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Uh, you gotta think about

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what was happening in France at this time, 1,804.

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The wallpaper was first printed.

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We were just post-revolution. Napoleon had taken control.

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France was still unstable,

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but you know, they were moving towards, you know,

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Napoleon had sort of given birth to this idea

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of France as an empire.

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Um, and they were, they were really embracing some

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of the enlightenment ideals of a few decades earlier,

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of the 18th century where,

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enlightenment technologies

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and ideas had sent off explorers like Captain Cook

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or like, Boganville, the French Explorer, Boganville.

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And there were others, of course, who explored their way

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when Dufour was most active.

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Um, you know, when he, well, when he printed the, the,

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the, the, the wallpaper that we are talking about,

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it was 1,804.

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Napoleon was, well

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and truly in control of France by this time.

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Um, and he had given birth to the idea of France

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as an empire, you know, post-revolution.

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You know, the, the society was not quite under control,

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but, you know, Napoleon certainly had a

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key agenda that we're all familiar with.

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Um, and they were embracing as part of

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that imperial narrative of France, they were embracing ideas

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of, the Enlightenment.

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And, the explorers of the 18th century,

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particularly came Captain Cook

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and Louis Boganville, the French Explorer, had

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broadly traveled across the Pacific, exploring,

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mapping, charting, collecting, curating stories,

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and then reporting back

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to European audiences in from the 1760s, 1770s onwards.

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Right? And Defo

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took these stories principally from Boganville and Cook,

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but there were, there were other explorers that informed

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that European narrative at the time.

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And he took the cook and the Boganville stories

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of encounter, and he created, he mapped, he painted

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that story, that narrative of the Pacific Islander peoples,

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but also of in particular, cooks encounter

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of these Pacific Islander societies and peoples.

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Um, and he created a wallpaper that was always intended

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to be hung in the salon.

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You know, the, the dining room, the lounge rooms

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of the affluent middle classes and upper classes of France.

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Well, well, we know that some of this made it its way

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to North America, so really across

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the northern hemisphere, right?

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And it was a work of art

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that stretched in total 10 meters.

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It was made up, if you imagine how wallpapers hung,

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you know, literally in sheets.

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Um, there were literally 20 different panels

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that were then hung side by side to create a panorama

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that would, at its best, at its best presentation,

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would encircle a room.

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So if you were dining in this room,

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it'd be surrounded entirely by this visual, you know,

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mural, if you like, this wallpaper mural.

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Uh, and on each of the panels, there was a scene

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that had been taken from either cook or boganville.

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Um, you know, an encounter in Tahiti, the murder

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of cook in Hawaii, encounters of Australia's East coast,

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marry in New Zealand.

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And pho imagined, these encounters

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and the scenes that were explained

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or described by the explorers,

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and then interpreted them based on the artistic framework

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that he was familiar with.

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So he put, you know, Grecian

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or Roman, you know, draped clothing on Tahitian women

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and had them looking like Greek goddesses dancing in

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formation and so on.

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So he was embracing, you know, the, the idea

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of the allegorical, you know, where you create,

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you turned a person into an imagined idea like Britannia.

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That's a really classic example.

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Um, so he embraced the allegorical.

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He embraced, embraced the ethnographic as well.

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He put the grass skirts on and the spears and the hands

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and so on, and, you know, some of the characters.

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Um, and he also started to embrace a movement

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around storytelling that was eventually developing in the

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late 18th century, where the artists

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who accompanied the scientific explorers didn't just,

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you know, went further, took literally, created records

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of encounter of conquest.

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Uh, so DuFours captured a range of these different styles,

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or, imaginings imagined, you know,

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encounters in the Pacific,

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on this extraordinary artwork.

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'cause it is remarkable. I think Sam,

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I think there's about five of them left in the world.

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There were several hundred copies of this wallpaper

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produced and, you know, and sold.

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Um, and there are now five that we know

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of in the Northern Hemisphere

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that are still intact in their entirety.

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And then there's about, I think about 30 fragments left in

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museum collections or gallery collections around the world.

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There's two Australian galleries that have got, a piece,

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a, a one or more panels,

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but there's not that many left

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where the entire artwork is collected still in its entirety.

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Lisa Han's story is absolutely fascinating.

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She is a New Zealand woman.

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She's of both British and Maori descent.

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Um, and I mentioned to you that there was, there is, a,

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a fragment of the wallpaper in the,

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in a collection in Australia.

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This is in the National Gallery

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of Australia, which is in Canberra.

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And Rihanna was visiting the gallery

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and saw, you know, the wallpaper, saw,

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the natives of the Pacific.

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And she said, you know, I'm staring at this 19th, 18th,

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19th century creation going, I don't see my story there.

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I don't see my people, I don't see my country.

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I don't see my landscape.

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And as an artist, she challenged herself to

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think about how could she retell that story?

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How could she work with the wallpaper in its,

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in its original design,

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and tell the other story, the other side of encounter,

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the other side of conquest, the true cultural experience

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and political and, and,

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and, you know, contact experiences

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of the Pacific Islanders

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and of the Australian Aboriginal people.

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And so she, she borrowed from the styling

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of the original wallpaper that was first created with layers

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and layers of color, hand, every piece was handmade,

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hand printed, you know,

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wood blocks laid down the first layers of color, hand,

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you know, artists would come in with brushes and,

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and add, add, you know, effect and clouds and scenes

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and so on across the paper.

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And hanana copied that style of blocks

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of color as if they'd been applied by a vintage woodblock.

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Um, and then instead of drawing

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or painting in these, you know,

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classically robed Tahitian dancers, she filmed,

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a cast thousands of Pacific Islanders

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and Australian aboriginal people.

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She, she filmed them in,

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traditional and authentic costume.

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She filmed them in authentic, you know,

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engaging in authentic cultural practice.

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She recorded language, she recorded dance,

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feasting, birthing.

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Sometimes these were really authentic representations

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of Pacific culture.

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Other times she was being really, ironic

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or satirical in, in creating scenes that were fantasy.

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You know, at one point, a man gives birth to a baby, in,

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in her, in her scene.

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So she creates this digital masterpiece,

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really, it's extraordinary.

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Um, it looks like a wallpaper, but it's a motion picture.

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Uh, and as a member of the audience, you would, you know,

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you, you'd take seat and you watch the wallpaper very,

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very slowly shift.

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Like a panorama would, like a, what's the word?

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Is it a diorama? You know, when you might sit in the middle

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of a work and it turns around you.

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So that's what she does with her work.

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She's got this, piece that moves,

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you only ever see the screen itself,

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but you have to imagine yourself being encircled by,

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and in total, the, the work takes about about 64 minutes

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to go from beginning to end, or from side to side.

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And in that, she, she positions actors, you know,

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in costume and authentic costume, soundscape, all sorts

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of extraordinary layers where she looks at,

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Pacific culture, but also that in that encounter, those,

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that, that early encounter of Pacific cultures and cook

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and his crew, it's really remarkable.

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It's a really extraordinary visual, you know, feast

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and sound feast too.

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She, she, gosh, Sam, she was really impressive.

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She collected, very purposefully did this very

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historically well-researched work.

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So she included not just authentic costume

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and practice, but also sound.

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So one of the artifacts, one

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of the sound artifacts in her work is a recording she made

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of captain Cook's clock of his ship clock,

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which is still in the collection in the uk,

14:46.445 --> 14:47.725
I suspect it's in Greenwich.

14:48.105 --> 14:50.735
And she went over there, they started it up,

14:50.755 --> 14:54.125
the clock ticked, and she recorded cook's own clock.

14:54.145 --> 14:56.725
And you can hear the ticking of the clock in the back

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of the soundscape throughout the work, this kind of ominous

15:00.755 --> 15:02.045
port tense of time

15:02.045 --> 15:04.045
that's moving forward and what's about to come.

15:04.195 --> 15:05.405
It's very, very impressive.

15:05.905 --> 15:08.165
My colleagues and I, who wrote the article that

15:08.165 --> 15:10.165
that included, Riley Buchanan,

15:10.165 --> 15:12.125
Elizabeth Burnand and Tony Church.

15:12.745 --> 15:17.405
And, we have long been interested in the idea

15:17.405 --> 15:21.045
that Hayden White, historical philosopher put forward,

15:21.055 --> 15:24.485
which is, he's basically said, he basically argues that

15:25.315 --> 15:29.445
text, you know, textual evidence only helps us understand

15:29.985 --> 15:31.245
so much of the past.

15:31.785 --> 15:36.685
It only captures so much of reality,

15:36.985 --> 15:38.405
and that there are, there has

15:38.405 --> 15:42.045
to be major gaps in our understanding of past experiences

15:42.395 --> 15:43.965
that text can't fill.

15:45.025 --> 15:49.125
Um, and white argues that it is imagination

15:49.355 --> 15:52.845
that helps us understand the rest of the real, the rest

15:52.845 --> 15:54.165
of the real experiences.

15:55.625 --> 15:59.805
And if you take that idea that we have to go

15:59.805 --> 16:00.925
beyond the textual record,

16:01.545 --> 16:03.845
and instead as human beings, imagine

16:04.115 --> 16:07.645
what experiences must have been like, imagine the gaps,

16:07.755 --> 16:10.045
imagine the stories that are currently untold

16:10.865 --> 16:15.125
or, ex perspectives of

16:16.025 --> 16:19.325
in the Pacific, in the case of the Pacific, perspectives

16:19.325 --> 16:20.965
of conquest and contact.

16:21.825 --> 16:24.725
Um, then his argument is, you know,

16:24.725 --> 16:27.285
we can extend his argument about, imagination,

16:27.285 --> 16:30.325
helping us capture the rest of the real by thinking about

16:30.345 --> 16:31.645
how art helps us do that.

16:32.225 --> 16:33.485
If artwork and other forms

16:33.485 --> 16:36.805
of visual evidence are themselves a creative expression,

16:37.225 --> 16:38.525
how can they help us imagine

16:39.555 --> 16:44.415
what might have been experienced, what we should, you know,

16:44.475 --> 16:47.255
the, the gaps in our text-based knowledge

16:48.095 --> 16:49.135
I mentioned to you at the beginning.

16:49.315 --> 16:52.495
Um, the artist hands, Holbein,

16:52.525 --> 16:54.615
there's another one you might be familiar with.

16:54.615 --> 16:56.975
This one, the Spaniards certainly are, it's an extraordinary

16:58.055 --> 17:02.095
national treasure, which is the work of, Goya,

17:02.155 --> 17:03.295
the same period

17:03.295 --> 17:05.695
that we are talking about late 18th, early 19th century.

17:06.315 --> 17:09.975
Um, and Goya had, Goya was a court artist in Madrid.

17:10.435 --> 17:13.255
Um, the British know the story of the Napoleonic and

17:13.255 --> 17:14.255
or the Peninsula War.

17:14.515 --> 17:16.655
Um, you know, Napoleon sweeps into Spain.

17:16.655 --> 17:17.895
He takes control of the country.

17:18.515 --> 17:21.775
And, there is at one point an uprising.

17:22.595 --> 17:26.055
And, the Spanish people have a good go in Madrid at

17:26.055 --> 17:28.535
overthrowing the French occupiers on Monday.

17:28.995 --> 17:31.575
And the next day there are these extraordinary reprisals

17:31.625 --> 17:34.135
where Napoleon and his police

17:34.195 --> 17:35.735
or his security forces sweep through

17:36.235 --> 17:39.375
and undertake all these summary executions across the city.

17:39.755 --> 17:43.855
And Goya, again, the artist is historian, is there,

17:43.875 --> 17:45.775
and he witnesses what happens.

17:46.475 --> 17:48.495
And he frantically paints, you know,

17:48.575 --> 17:50.485
Sketches some of this trauma of war.

17:50.865 --> 17:55.085
But then after time, he creates this monumental canvas

17:56.155 --> 17:59.445
that is that moment in which the Spanish

17:59.995 --> 18:01.885
resistors are lined up against a wall

18:01.905 --> 18:03.765
and are executed by a French firing squad.

18:04.465 --> 18:06.565
And it is one of the most powerful pieces

18:06.625 --> 18:08.285
of art in Western history,

18:08.755 --> 18:11.445
because what it does is it captures an event,

18:11.865 --> 18:14.885
but more than that, it captures experience.

18:15.505 --> 18:17.965
You know, we can imagine how they're feeling.

18:18.145 --> 18:21.245
We can imagine the sacrifice, we can imagine the trauma,

18:21.385 --> 18:23.165
the bravery, the heroism.

18:23.945 --> 18:25.925
Um, we can imagine being there

18:25.965 --> 18:28.405
because of the power of what this artist has done.

18:28.825 --> 18:31.045
So Han's done exactly the same thing with her work.

18:31.425 --> 18:33.085
She helps us imagine

18:33.555 --> 18:35.925
what the Pacific encounters must have been like

18:36.745 --> 18:37.965
for the Pacific Islanders,

18:38.135 --> 18:41.285
which was never captured in the diary entries

18:41.285 --> 18:42.525
of Cook or Boganville.

18:42.525 --> 18:46.165
It was never captured by the artists who were part

18:46.165 --> 18:49.965
of those scientific, exploratory missions.

18:50.625 --> 18:53.525
Um, so this is our chance to shift that perspective.

00:00 - My colleagues and I, were working, by this time, or had been working for some time on the idea of, imagination and history and the way in which visual evidence like art, could help us understand the past and could help us even contest ideas of history, you know,

00:22 - the established historical narratives. How could art or architecture or other forms of visual evidence help us understand, you know, more deeply the, the complex lived realities of, of communities and societies in the past? we, we were playing around a lot with, the question of the degree to which an artist might also be recording history, or even in some cases making history. to what degree might an artist sometimes be a historian?

01:00 - And we, we often talk to undergraduate and postgraduate students in our classes about the idea of artists making history or artists recording history. And there were some really interesting examples that we used to think about. one was, I, I know your listeners will be very familiar with, the story of Henry VII and his many wives. And if you could imagine Henry VIII in your mind, what does he look like to you? Can you see him, like, literally,

01:26 - can you tell me what he looks like? And the reason you and I are thinking almost exactly the same picture of Henry VIII is because of the, the extraordinary and the enduring power of the artist Holbein, who was part of his court, who was capturing the record of Henry viii, his wives, you know, the aristocracy around them and so on. and Holbein was an artist that, as I said, was attached to the court of the Tudors. And at one point was sent over to Europe when,

01:58 - the king was considering another marriage to Anne of Cleaves. And Anne of Cleaves was, is now understood to have been perhaps a little on the plain side, but Holbein was sent over by government to go, you better make a look as attractive as possible as a prospect for the king. And he comes home to London with or to the, to the king's court with this portrait of this, very serious looking young woman,

02:23 - but still a very beautiful, gracious portrait, dressed up, you know, enhanced. She, her looks were enhanced by the beautiful clothing and jewelry that he put on her and so on. And so the king, you know, accepted the marriage essentially on the face value of the portrait that the artist had created. And then when he saw her in reality, you know, the, the, the story, the legend, is that he immediately, you know, considered that she didn't live up to the promise

02:48 - of the artists, you know, rendering. And the marriage was doomed from the beginning. And we all know what happened to Anna Cleves, which is that the marriage didn't last, though she wasn't executed. and so that's a really interesting example of Not just an artist who was capturing history, but in this instance, an artist who was making history. He was part of the, the story of the Tudor wives, right? So, you know, my colleagues and I, we, we thought a lot about the idea in which art can

03:11 - tell stories of the past, and the role of the artist in that. And then in the middle of this is a very long way of answering your question, Sam, about the work that we've done on the Lisa Rehana piece. In the middle of this work that we were doing together on art and the past, a new exhibition rolled into our, our hometown, Sam, I'm in Perth in Western Australia. We are the most isolated city in the world, right?

03:37 - Literally Perth is, is Perth is closer to Singapore and Bali than it is to Sydney or Canberra or Melbourne. We're a long way from everywhere. And in the middle of, you know, this work that we were doing, this new exhibition roles into Perth of, Lisa Han's work called, the Pursuit of Venus Infected. And it was this extraordinary digital reimagining of a very early 19th century wallpaper created by, a French, artist

04:07 - and designer, well manufacturer, really in the south of France. And she retold digitally and visually retold the story of European exploration and encounters in the Pacific in the 18th century. And so that gave us another really interesting way into thinking about, you know, is Lisa Han is an artist who's contesting, historical narratives, but she's also helping us imagine more of the historical

04:37 - or the lived experience than what other forms of historical records can help us with. So yeah, that, that was like the context of the project that we did. It's, it's a really, really interesting work. the, wallpaper manufacturer was Joseph dfo. He was, operating out of France in the late 18th and early 19th century, so say 1790s to the 1810, you know, that were, were probably his peak period of production. and,

05:04 - the company DFO created a work, an extraordinary panoramic wallpaper called Les Pacific, the Natives of the Pacific Ocean. you gotta think about what was happening in France at this time, 1,804. The wallpaper was first printed. We were just post-revolution. Napoleon had taken control. France was still unstable, but you know, they were moving towards, you know, Napoleon had sort of given birth to this idea

05:35 - of France as an empire. and they were, they were really embracing some of the enlightenment ideals of a few decades earlier, of the 18th century where, enlightenment technologies and ideas had sent off explorers like Captain Cook or like, Boganville, the French Explorer, Boganville. And there were others, of course, who explored their way when Dufour was most active. you know, when he, well, when he printed the, the,

06:07 - the, the, the wallpaper that we are talking about, it was 1,804. Napoleon was, well and truly in control of France by this time. and he had given birth to the idea of France as an empire, you know, post-revolution. You know, the, the society was not quite under control, but, you know, Napoleon certainly had a key agenda that we're all familiar with. and they were embracing as part of

06:34 - that imperial narrative of France, they were embracing ideas of, the Enlightenment. And, the explorers of the 18th century, particularly came Captain Cook and Louis Boganville, the French Explorer, had broadly traveled across the Pacific, exploring, mapping, charting, collecting, curating stories, and then reporting back to European audiences in from the 1760s, 1770s onwards. Right? And Defo

07:08 - took these stories principally from Boganville and Cook, but there were, there were other explorers that informed that European narrative at the time. And he took the cook and the Boganville stories of encounter, and he created, he mapped, he painted that story, that narrative of the Pacific Islander peoples, but also of in particular, cooks encounter of these Pacific Islander societies and peoples. and he created a wallpaper that was always intended to be hung in the salon.

07:43 - You know, the, the dining room, the lounge rooms of the affluent middle classes and upper classes of France. Well, well, we know that some of this made it its way to North America, so really across the northern hemisphere, right? And it was a work of art that stretched in total 10 meters. It was made up, if you imagine how wallpapers hung, you know, literally in sheets. there were literally 20 different panels

08:10 - that were then hung side by side to create a panorama that would, at its best, at its best presentation, would encircle a room. So if you were dining in this room, it'd be surrounded entirely by this visual, you know, mural, if you like, this wallpaper mural. and on each of the panels, there was a scene that had been taken from either cook or boganville. you know, an encounter in Tahiti, the murder of cook in Hawaii, encounters of Australia's East coast,

08:42 - marry in New Zealand. And pho imagined, these encounters and the scenes that were explained or described by the explorers, and then interpreted them based on the artistic framework that he was familiar with. So he put, you know, Grecian or Roman, you know, draped clothing on Tahitian women and had them looking like Greek goddesses dancing in formation and so on.

09:10 - So he was embracing, you know, the, the idea of the allegorical, you know, where you create, you turned a person into an imagined idea like Britannia. That's a really classic example. so he embraced the allegorical. He embraced, embraced the ethnographic as well. He put the grass skirts on and the spears and the hands and so on, and, you know, some of the characters. and he also started to embrace a movement around storytelling that was eventually developing in the

09:40 - late 18th century, where the artists who accompanied the scientific explorers didn't just, you know, went further, took literally, created records of encounter of conquest. so DuFours captured a range of these different styles, or, imaginings imagined, you know, encounters in the Pacific, on this extraordinary artwork. 'cause it is remarkable. I think Sam, I think there's about five of them left in the world.

10:09 - There were several hundred copies of this wallpaper produced and, you know, and sold. and there are now five that we know of in the Northern Hemisphere that are still intact in their entirety. And then there's about, I think about 30 fragments left in museum collections or gallery collections around the world. There's two Australian galleries that have got, a piece, a, a one or more panels, but there's not that many left

10:36 - where the entire artwork is collected still in its entirety. Lisa Han's story is absolutely fascinating. She is a New Zealand woman. She's of both British and Maori descent. and I mentioned to you that there was, there is, a, a fragment of the wallpaper in the, in a collection in Australia. This is in the National Gallery of Australia, which is in Canberra. And Rihanna was visiting the gallery

11:00 - and saw, you know, the wallpaper, saw, the natives of the Pacific. And she said, you know, I'm staring at this 19th, 18th, 19th century creation going, I don't see my story there. I don't see my people, I don't see my country. I don't see my landscape. And as an artist, she challenged herself to think about how could she retell that story? How could she work with the wallpaper in its, in its original design,

11:31 - and tell the other story, the other side of encounter, the other side of conquest, the true cultural experience and political and, and, and, you know, contact experiences of the Pacific Islanders and of the Australian Aboriginal people. And so she, she borrowed from the styling of the original wallpaper that was first created with layers and layers of color, hand, every piece was handmade, hand printed, you know,

12:01 - wood blocks laid down the first layers of color, hand, you know, artists would come in with brushes and, and add, add, you know, effect and clouds and scenes and so on across the paper. And hanana copied that style of blocks of color as if they'd been applied by a vintage woodblock. and then instead of drawing or painting in these, you know, classically robed Tahitian dancers, she filmed, a cast thousands of Pacific Islanders

12:36 - and Australian aboriginal people. She, she filmed them in, traditional and authentic costume. She filmed them in authentic, you know, engaging in authentic cultural practice. She recorded language, she recorded dance, feasting, birthing. Sometimes these were really authentic representations of Pacific culture. Other times she was being really, ironic

13:00 - or satirical in, in creating scenes that were fantasy. You know, at one point, a man gives birth to a baby, in, in her, in her scene. So she creates this digital masterpiece, really, it's extraordinary. it looks like a wallpaper, but it's a motion picture. and as a member of the audience, you would, you know, you, you'd take seat and you watch the wallpaper very, very slowly shift. Like a panorama would, like a, what's the word?

13:30 - Is it a diorama? You know, when you might sit in the middle of a work and it turns around you. So that's what she does with her work. She's got this, piece that moves, you only ever see the screen itself, but you have to imagine yourself being encircled by, and in total, the, the work takes about about 64 minutes to go from beginning to end, or from side to side. And in that, she, she positions actors, you know, in costume and authentic costume, soundscape, all sorts

14:02 - of extraordinary layers where she looks at, Pacific culture, but also that in that encounter, those, that, that early encounter of Pacific cultures and cook and his crew, it's really remarkable. It's a really extraordinary visual, you know, feast and sound feast too. She, she, gosh, Sam, she was really impressive. She collected, very purposefully did this very historically well-researched work. So she included not just authentic costume

14:33 - and practice, but also sound. So one of the artifacts, one of the sound artifacts in her work is a recording she made of captain Cook's clock of his ship clock, which is still in the collection in the uk, I suspect it's in Greenwich. And she went over there, they started it up, the clock ticked, and she recorded cook's own clock. And you can hear the ticking of the clock in the back of the soundscape throughout the work, this kind of ominous

15:00 - port tense of time that's moving forward and what's about to come. It's very, very impressive. My colleagues and I, who wrote the article that that included, Riley Buchanan, Elizabeth Burnand and Tony Church. And, we have long been interested in the idea that Hayden White, historical philosopher put forward, which is, he's basically said, he basically argues that text, you know, textual evidence only helps us understand

15:29 - so much of the past. It only captures so much of reality, and that there are, there has to be major gaps in our understanding of past experiences that text can't fill. and white argues that it is imagination that helps us understand the rest of the real, the rest of the real experiences. And if you take that idea that we have to go beyond the textual record,

16:01 - and instead as human beings, imagine what experiences must have been like, imagine the gaps, imagine the stories that are currently untold or, ex perspectives of in the Pacific, in the case of the Pacific, perspectives of conquest and contact. then his argument is, you know, we can extend his argument about, imagination, helping us capture the rest of the real by thinking about how art helps us do that.

16:32 - If artwork and other forms of visual evidence are themselves a creative expression, how can they help us imagine what might have been experienced, what we should, you know, the, the gaps in our text-based knowledge I mentioned to you at the beginning. the artist hands, Holbein, there's another one you might be familiar with. This one, the Spaniards certainly are, it's an extraordinary national treasure, which is the work of, Goya,

17:02 - the same period that we are talking about late 18th, early 19th century. and Goya had, Goya was a court artist in Madrid. the British know the story of the Napoleonic and or the Peninsula War. you know, Napoleon sweeps into Spain. He takes control of the country. And, there is at one point an uprising. And, the Spanish people have a good go in Madrid at overthrowing the French occupiers on Monday.

17:28 - And the next day there are these extraordinary reprisals where Napoleon and his police or his security forces sweep through and undertake all these summary executions across the city. And Goya, again, the artist is historian, is there, and he witnesses what happens. And he frantically paints, you know, Sketches some of this trauma of war. But then after time, he creates this monumental canvas that is that moment in which the Spanish

17:59 - resistors are lined up against a wall and are executed by a French firing squad. And it is one of the most powerful pieces of art in Western history, because what it does is it captures an event, but more than that, it captures experience. You know, we can imagine how they're feeling. We can imagine the sacrifice, we can imagine the trauma, the bravery, the heroism. we can imagine being there

18:25 - because of the power of what this artist has done. So Han's done exactly the same thing with her work. She helps us imagine what the Pacific encounters must have been like for the Pacific Islanders, which was never captured in the diary entries of Cook or Boganville. It was never captured by the artists who were part of those scientific, exploratory missions. so this is our chance to shift that perspective.

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