Context (Other owners)
Previously gifted to Dr Rangihīroa Panoho by the artist, and later sold to MAA through the Gow Langsford Gallery
Event Date
Author: rachel hand

Context (References)
cf. Collage and colour photocopy (Collection of Rangihiroa and Adrienne Panoho) in Nicholas Thomas (1996) 'The Dream of Joseph: Practices of Identity in Pacific Art' in The Contemporary Pacific , FALL 1996, Vol. 8, No. 2 (FALL 1996), pp. 291-317, fig 4, pp. 301-2.
Noted as 'Another artist, Jim Vivieaere, suggested that the distinctiveness of Pacific Islander art lay in "the freedom and the liberty to use the Polynesian motif" (Panoho 1990a, 24). Something else is arguably more conspicuous in his own work; if Ioane's portrait is of an Islander's subjectivity rather than an Islander as subject, Vivieaere deals more explicitly with the problem of the ways Polynesians have been represented. A witty piece, 6 Tahitians, 2 in Leningrad, 4 in Papeete (Figure 4), juxtaposes an inferior reproduction of a Gauguin painting and a colonial postcard, implying that both engage in the same voyeuristic exoticism, and drawing attention to the ludicrous remoteness of the painting from the place and people depicted (the Gauguin Museum in Tahiti contains no Gauguin paintings). This underlines the extent to which Islanders have been imaged not for themselves but for others, while suggesting that ironic reappropriation can be effected by an Islander who fixes the pictures to the unmistakably indigenous space of a woven pandanus sheet'

Event Date 1996
Author: rachel hand

Context (References)
cf Heather Waldroup (Dec 2010) 'Traveling representations: Noa Noa, Manao Tupapau, and Gauguin's legacy in the Pacific' in Journeys (Vol. 11, Issue 2)
Event Date 2010
Author: rachel hand

Context (Auction / Sale)
Acquired partly though a grant from the Art Fund and a private donation.
Event Date 2013
Author: rachel hand

Description (CMS Description)
Framed digital print of '6 Tahitians: 2 in Leningrad 4 in Papeete' by Jim Vivieaere. The work incorporates a monochrome reproduction of a Paul Gauguin painting set above a colonial postcard.

Event Date 17/1/2014
Author: maa

Context (Production / use)
Jim Vivieaere (1947 to 2011). 'Vivieaere had been a pivotal figure in the New Zealand and Pacific Islands arts community, and was instrumental in raising recognition of Pacific Island artists in New Zealand and abroad. Over the past three decades, he curated major exhibitions and fostered now iconic Pacific artists including Michel Tuffery and Shigeyuki Kihara. Vivieaere's curatorial work in the groundbreaking 'Bottled Ocean (1994),' the first survey exhibition of Pacific Island contemporary art that first opened at the City Gallery Wellington, and then traveled around New Zealand, subverted institutional conventions that categorized Pacific artists as merely exotic indigenes. 'Pacific cultural origins and traditions can be made a source of creative possibilities rather than constraints,' he wrote in the exhibition catalog.
Of Rarotongan origin, Vivieaere was born on September 12, 1947 in the small town of Waipawa, New Zealand. In the late 1960s he attended the Dunedin School of Medicine to begin medical training. Yet as a Polynesian minority faced with everyday racism, he found himself estranged from the predominantly white upper-middle class academia. Vivieaere dropped out, and in 1972 he entered the School of Fine Arts at Canterbury University.
As a Cook Islander brought up away from his heritage ”living the early part of his life in places such as Hawke's Bay, Dunedin, and Coromandel. ”Vivieaere first encountered Polynesian culture in 1981, when a sojourn in Australia brought him in contact with a Tahitian family in Noosa Heads. It was then his interest in 'Pacific Islandness' piqued, and would come to define his work as a curator, artist and mentor.
As an artist, Vivieaere participated in the fourth Noumea Biennial of Contemporary Arts (2000), and in 2007, exhibited in the major exhibition 'Le Folauga' at the Auckland Museum, which subsequently traveled to the Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, Taiwan in 2008. Much of his work consists of multimedia and video collages that explore the hybrid identities of contemporary Polynesians. His video installation, This is not an ocean, this is a rented house / this is not a hand, this is a library / this is not the sky, this is a grandfather clock / this is not a child, this is a mirror (2007), displayed at 'Le Folauga' shows a child diving into calm water and swimming away with awkward motions against a threatening soundtrack of surging ocean waves.
Vivieaere's most significant contribution to New Zealand art, however, remains his curatorial work. In addition to his breakout 'Bottled Ocean' he recently co-curated the exhibition 'The Great Journey: In Pursuit of the Ancestral Realm' at the Kaohsiung Museum in 2009, which explored the cross-cultural connections between Taiwan's indigenous and Pacific Islanders, and featured New Zealand artists Lisa Reihana, Shane Cotton, Virginia King, Greg Semu and Michel Tuffery.'
Taken from http://artasiapacific.com/News/JimVivieaere19472011
Event Date 17/1/2014
Author: maa

Context (Display)
Exhibited in the wall case from 12 Feburary- 18 November in the Mausdlay Gallery for the book launch of Director Nicholas Thomas (2024) Gauguin and Polynesia. (Apollo).

Event Date 12/2/2024
Author: rachel hand

Context (Display)
Gauguin and Polynesia: A Conversation and Book Launch was held in MAA on 13 Feb 2024, hosted by Nicholas Thomas with Maia Nuku, Curator for Oceanic Art at the Metropolitan Museum, and chaired by Luke Syson, Director of the Fitzwilliam Museum. Short talks on Oceanic art histories were followed by wine and conversations.

Event Date 13/2/2024
Author: rachel hand