Jim Vivieare’s art is about the process of trafficking, the shifting of objects from one place to another. It implies the concept of exchange and negotiation, establishing relationships of trust and support. The relationships between these objects have an obvious visual occurrence of function and resonance; they posture in a fictive exhibition, to convey a sense of truth, location and continuity.
For this exhibition Vivieaere has recontextualised items from an ethnographic museum into a museum-like display in an art gallery. The borrowed items are all from everyday life for pacific people (like sandals, clothing etc), that have been collected by zealous ethnographers as cultural artefacts and stored for research in the museum. One can’t help but picture a slightly nerdy scientist gathering objects that fit his story of the ‘local rituals’.
This is the third time that Vivieaere has worked in a museum environment, establishing relationships with the artefacts and the display areas of Pacific Island stored culture.