I can’t even remember when I met Jim. I think it was on the stairs of the Old Museum in Buckle Street when he was developing Bottled Ocean. He called in on his way back from south and visiting artists like Johnny Penisula. His work as Sean wrote about in the First Art Now project at Buckle Street curated by Tina Barton was a fantastic work with those drums hanging precariously above the taonga cases of the Pacific gallery. His work was an intervention into and a critique of the Pacific Galleries display, supported and accomodated by Dr Janet Davidson who then worked at the Museum as well as by Tina as the curator of that project.

I remember spending time with Jim in Sydney in the early 1990′s at a conference at the MCA and being filmed with him attending a Bangarra dance performance at the the invitation of Tracy Moffatt as part of French Documentary about Tracy and her art practice. She said in her self-effacing way that she wanted to be seen as having lots of friends. Jim also supported Tracy with her ‘Up in the Sky Photographs’, working as part of her crew during the creation of those works and travelled to New York for her big opening at the DIA Centre of the Arts which in many ways launched Tracy internationally.

I also remember spending lots of time with Jim and Terry Firkin at Archill Gallery in Auckland with the then Curator of Contemporary Maori art John Walsh and with other colleagues and friends.

I have two artworks of Jim’s myself from a show held in Canberra, not even sure of the year anymore, but the exhibition coincided with a symposium called Reimaging the Pacific, in honour of Bernard Smith, Bernard Smith attended and was the keynote speaker. The symposium was organised by Dr Nicholas Thomas who then worked at the Cross Cultural Research Centre in Canberra. Jim, John Pule, Brett Graham and myself formed the New Zealand contingent at the symposium, invited by Nicholas and financially supported by monies he source on our behalves. Along with Judy Watson of Australia we formed a strong part of the indigenous contingent involved in that symposium. The two works I have I bought from Jim because they were so Jim. Neither cost very much. At that time I am sure I could not afford very much, still can’t! but they appealed as minimal and unassuming works, but which like Jim, had a quiet but definite presence.

One is called Man on Beach and features sand from Papaeete, Tahiti and the other is called Man on Volcano and features volcanic ash from Mt Ruapehu when it was erupting. Last time he stayed at my house, in Wellington for the opening of Pacific exhibition at the City Gallery, he added a shell neckland to the Papaeete work, which still hangs around it.

Jim also travelled with me to the Banff Centre for Continuing Education in Canada in 2003 and participated in the Making a Noise Symposium that looked at ‘Aboriginal perspectives on art, art history, critical writing and community.’

I wanted to finish my small tribute to Jim of random rememberings, by quoting some of his own words from the paper he presented at that symposim.

‘Indigenous art is positioned for the moment, when the pendulum reaches its apex,the split that stays in balance, and then circles. This is the time of transition, the turning point, when the past activates the present, when the tuna eats its tail.’

Moe mai Jim Vivieaere, nga mihi aroha kia koe

Megan Tamati-Quennell

Curator Contemporary Maori, Indigenous art
Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa