Award-winning Aotearoa artist Lisa Reihana AM has represented New Zealand at the Venice Biennale (2017), has been included in major exhibitions at some of the world’s most prestigious museums, and is widely celebrated for her sensitive, thought provoking digital works – and yet, Reihana is yet to be offered a survey exhibition back home.
This makes her survey, titled Voyager, at Ngununggula – Southern Highlands Regional Gallery all the more important.
That ambition is set before one even enters the gallery. Reihana has created a site-responsive kinetic work for the gallery’s Entry Pavilion, titled Belong – which is comprised of hundreds of reflective discs that flicker and shimmer in the sun and gentle breeze.
It is the second work in this manner – after last year’s commission for the National Gallery Singapore, Glisten (2024), and this rural town stands tall alongside this international venue with a world class – the gallery’s first international exhibition.
Stepping inside, the gallery’s four spaces present video works stretching from 2018–2025 – some epic multi-screen endeavours, and others more intimate. The historic anchor for the show, sits deep within its belly in the middle gallery, Te Woa o Tāne, a quilt created in 1995.
Reihana tells me it speaks to the creation story, and the separation of heaven and earth – the quilt gently unfurling onto the floor to ground our earthly presence.
Its inclusion draws a beautiful connection with Belong, on the façade – both using tiled blocks of colour to convey a narrative that is both timeless and present today – but also with the video opposite, IHI (2020), which also plays out this narrative of how our world was created.
This two-sided video is suspended in a darkened room painted that velvety dark blue of the night sky, when anything is possible and everything is magical. As with all of Reihana’s videos, dance, movement, costume, community come together – and this piece reunites two dancers (Taane Mete and Nancy Wijohn) who she has worked with over many years.
While this modest video offers a kind of heartbeat to this show, it is the gallery prior where the impressive three-screen immersive video, GOLD_LEAD_WOOD_COAL (2024), reimagines the story of the SS Ventnor – a cargo ship that sank off New Zealand’s coast in 1902 while repatriating the bodies of 499 Chinese gold miners, who had died in New Zealand and were being repatriated to their villages in Guangdong.
It is a stunning lament, turning to the human spirit that prevails in adversity, and in particular, the care expressed by Māori who become the unexpected custodians of these bones when washed ashore.
Visually beautiful set against Otago’s rugged landscapes, barren mountains and windswept waters, Reihana is not only a master storyteller, but technically wows, with the evocative sound landscape created by James Cooper, Reihana’s partner, completing this piece – often the unspoken aspect of her works.
Again, it signals the ambition of the gallery to show a major immersive video commissioned for a museum in Hong Kong.
Moving through the gallery, visitors have the opportunity to circle back on the works (given the gallery’s single entrance), which allows one to re-enter the video narratives at different moments – which makes this quite a different experience for Ngununggula, than say a painting show.
It also helps viewers to draw a thread of through Reihana’s oeuvre – a good fit for a survey exhibition – mapping that consistent evocation of history, culture and memory.
The exhibition is bookended by two very different video works – Māramatanga (2024) as one enters the first gallery, and CHRISTIAN LOUBOUTIN – A REVERIE (2020) capping off the exhibition in the final space.
The longest work (20 minutes), Māramatanga (2024) was commissioned by the University of Auckland, and is a series of vignettes featuring six dancers embodying ātua (ancestral spirits with continuing influence) and the carved figures of a Māori meeting house, which move across various landscapes from sea to forest.
In a corner is a model ship floating suspended and dramatically lit. While it literally nods to the show’s title, it also symbolically located Reihana as a kind of voyager across worlds, from weighty histories to a sci-fi aspect that inhabits some of her work.
In vast contrast to this first video, the last is an abstracted self-portrait without a person to be seen, commissioned by the renowned designer Christian Louboutin. Presented on curved screen with surrounding pink walls (not his signature red soles) it blurs the worlds of fantasy and reality, and reminds – just as equally as the heart wrenching ethereal narrative of GOLD_LEAD_WOOD_COAL – objects, places, and associations define who we are. It is powerful curating that allows subtleties to speak the loudest.
Peppering these major works across the gallery are a number of slick stills on aluminium – artworks framed in their own right – taken also from her now signature videos such as, in Pursuit of Venus [infected], 2015–17 (Venice Biennale 2017), and GROUNDLOOP (2022) for the opening of Sydney Modern.
Former director of Ngununggula Megan Monte was the first Australian venue to present Reihana’s Venice work at Campbelltown Art Gallery – and it is a pivot point for this show, with all works presented are from that seismic moment forward.
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Overall, this is a generous exhibition – both from the perspective of the artist and the gallery – and it a feeling that pulses through in the deep humanity within these video works presented. It is a beautiful exhibition, and a hugely impressive body of work – every bit worthy of Reihana’s celebration as an artist.
Lisa Reihana is an artist of Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Hine, Ngāi Tū descent.
Lisa Reihana: Voyager is showing at Ngununggula – Southern Highlands Regional Gallery, Bowral from 6 September – 9 November 2025. Free.
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