The Raft of the Tagata Pasifika (People of the Pacific)

Large-scale photographic works that draw attention to the impact of colonisation on First Nations People across the Pacific. It pivots on Greg Semu’s work in the Cook Islands with a cast of twenty-two actors in restaging and digitally capturing two epic nineteenth-century European history paintings of heroic survival at sea. Semu re-imagines and reconfigures Théodore Géricault’s The Raft of the Medusa, 1819, and Louis John Steele and Charles F. Goldie’s The Arrival of the Māoris in New Zealand, 1898, which was based directly on Géricault’s work. From this digital photographic material, Semu has created monumental light-box installations. Employing photography’s capacity for interrogating truth, Semu questions the veracity of Goldie and Steele’s The Arrival of the Māoris in New Zealand and leads us towards a shared Māori view of their ancestors’ migratory voyage to Aotearoa / New Zealand.

RESIDENCY

In 2014 Greg Semu was awarded a Creative New Zealand month-long residency in the Cook Islands to research and film part of this series

SOLO EXHIBITION

2016

Greg Semu – The Raft of the Tagata Pasifika (People of the Pacific)

National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Victoria, AUSTRALIA

Type C transparency prints and light box installation supported by Creative New Zealand and the Wallace Arts Trust

GROUP EXHIBITION

2018

OCEANIA RISING: WAYFINDERS

Casula Powerhouse Arts Center, NSW, AUSTRALIA

C type prints