Claire Healy, Sean Cordeiro, Life Span photo Alex Davies |
off-site projects
Except for Ken Yonetani’s Sweet Barrier Reef, a rather dull comment on the effects of consumerism on nature, the Australian off-site project Once Removed curated by Felicity Fenner offers a refreshing insight into the predicament of displacement. Undoubtedly part of the show’s appeal is the extraordinary location, the Ludoteca, formerly a convent in a prime position between the Giardini and the Arsenale. At the entrance is a chapel, where Claire Healy and Sean Cordeiro present their impressive new work Life Span. 195,774 VHS tapes are stacked into a neatly arranged plinth, responding boldly to the religious architecture of the space. What is immediately striking is the weight and solidity of this monument, an exaggerated reminder of the obsolete material packaging of globally circulated screen fantasies. But the artists also reflect on the passing of time and its multiple scales; neither the crumbling walls of the old church nor the black plastic surfaces of the tapes can speak of eternity. The combined running time of these tapes is the average human’s life span when VHS was released, 66.1 years. Thinking of how many hours of pornography fill the monolith, the idea of this content flashing before one’s eyes at death is also staggering. The rumours around Venice before the opening were that the Australians had ‘video porn’ on show. Needless to say, Once Removed has been well attended.
Vernon Ah Kee photo Alex Davies |
Other standout off-site events include Unconditional Love at the Arsenale Novissimo, organised by the Moscow Museum of Modern Art. On display at this wharf venue is the extraordinary video panorama by AES+F, The Feast of Trimalchio, as well as a handful of other Russian up and comers all grappling with the future of affection in a hypersexual world.
Ming Wong, Life of Imitation photo Alex Davies |
These off-site pavilions and collateral exhibitions can be difficult to find in the labyrinthine alleyways of Venice, but away from the hype of the Arsenale and Giardini, they are truly highlights of the biennale.
giardini pavilions
For most exhibitors in the main pavilions, grappling with national identity is part of the brief. Shaun Gladwell’s slickly presented MADDESTMAXIMVS is no exception. Gladwell’s rapid ascent to international success has not been without criticism, but his solo exhibition at the Australian Pavilion does rise to the challenge of the biennale, transporting visitors to a particularly Australian time and space. Before they even get there, Biennale-goers are hooked, pausing at the promotional posters lining Venice’s canals of a leather-clad and helmeted Gladwell cradling roadkill in the searing Australian desert; “Is that a real kangaroo?”
Gosha Ostretsov, Art Life or the Torments of Creation photo Alex Davies |
Fiona Tan, Disorient photo Alex Davies |
making worlds
Daniel Birnbaum, the Biennale’s 2009 director, defines his curatorial concept with the title Making Worlds, attempting to credit the methods and strategies of artists everywhere. The massive group exhibition includes the work of over 90 artists. The theme may be vague (how could an all-encompassing global artistic vision be anything else?), but the selection of work is extraordinary. While there is dialogue between artists, it is refreshing to see that there is no universal language here.
Outdoors, in the beautiful Giardino delle Vergini (Garden of the Virgins), is a maze of site-specific interventions by younger artists such as Miranda July, who gently teases her audience with colourful invitations of poetic self-portraiture. Chinese artist Chu Yun’s Constellation No. 3 is just as whimsical; a glorious universe of flickering stars in a darkened room, revealing itself on closer inspection to be created by the familiar flashing indicator lights of fridges, kettles, microwaves and fax machines.
The overall impression of the biennale is predictably sensational and generalised. Such a quantity of art arranged under the clumsy classification of nations may be impossible to be otherwise. But within its component parts, scattered throughout Venice, appears a scale of specificities showing that artists of the world may, in fact, not have so much in common after all.
The 53rd Venice Biennale, June 7-Nov 22
RealTime issue #92 Aug-Sept 2009 pg. 14
© Alexandra Crosby; for permission to reproduce apply to [email protected]