Kōrero: Pacific arts in New Zealand

Jim Vivieaere, curator of the exhibition Bottled Ocean, included a broad group of Pacific artists, working in many forms and at different stages of their artistic careers. Vivieaere told the New Zealand Heraldthat the ‘only reason we are here is that we are Polynesian – not on our merits but because we’re the "other"…. We don’t need Polynesian shows. I would like to see it as the last.’

At Wellington’s City Gallery, many of the Bottled Ocean works were displayed in a mirror-bottomed, perspex-fronted cabinet, mimicking museum displays of objects or window displays of department stores. At the Auckland Art Gallery (shown here), some works remained in their cases and others were partly unpacked. The positioning of the art, the lack of labels and the diversity of the work were, said Vivieaere, artificial problems for viewers to actively deal with.