New Zealand artist Lisa Reihana brings the clash of civilisations to life in her epic video work In Pursuit of Venus, at the National Gallery of Victoria from June 10.

Reihana has been inspired by a neoclassical panoramic depiction of Captain Cook's Pacific voyages.

Indigenous viewpoint: Still of Lisa Reihana's video In Pursuit of Venus, 2015.

French entrepreneur Joseph Dufour created Les Sauvages de la Mer Pacifique, a 20-panel scenic wallpaper, in 1804.

Its representation of a utopian Tahiti reflected then-fashionable ideas of exotic native people living in paradise.