Lisa Reihana: Close encounters of the Pacific mind

Now she has worked out the technical aspects, Reihana hopes in future to include some of the indigenous peoples excluded from the wallpaper, such as the tribes around Nootka Sound in Alaska where Cook spent time, and Australian Aboriginals.

"It's like a long handshake. I can now invite others into this project, including live performances to let those people in. When Joseph Dufour sold this wallpaper he made a prospectus where he said he left out certain peoples because they were ugly, so I want to react against that notion."

Preparations for the work included travelling to England to source an authentic uniform for the Captain Cook character. Reihana drew heavily on writings about first encounters, especially Dame Anne Salmond's The Trial Of The Cannibal Dog.

"She's a really good storyteller. She calls herself a visual anthropologist. [Film-maker] Annie Goldson uses that terminology as well. For an artist that's a good in-point, using visuality and critiquing imagery. I took some of her stories and stripped them back."

In her first foray into scriptwriting, Reihana prepared about 60 scenes. She then brought in writer and director Rachel House as drama coach.

"We had meetings on why a particular scene should be re-enacted, then we went out and cast all these kids, and then during the workshop process she would not let me in the room. So it is her reading of my reading and then it becomes the actors' reading of these ideas.

"It was an opportunity to work with young Pacific people and give them really good stories to enact and bring their own feelings and invoke their own thoughts and their own ideas of these histories. I feel as an artist or film-maker or producer of the project, it is like setting up a structure and knowing what I want from it but then creating space in there so each actor or performer could bring their own history."

Collaboration of Artist, performing artist, film maker, producer.
I love how this piece of art brings cultures, time periods, and artist together.
The culture and history of the early pacific people, meets the urban culture of the pacific people today.
Old meets new, and find common appreciation for each other. Especially for the pacific people today, going back to their roots and finding appreciation for ancestors and a culture that is intertwined through bloodline and lineage.
Everyone apart of this collab know what their role is and by performing to the best of their abilities, it results in a successful outcome.