The Commercial Scene

Tonight I'm heading to Sydney to help set up the Constance ARI stall at the Sydney Contemporary art fair.  Constance was invited as one of two ARIs to showcase work by local emerging artists, which is an indicator of the gallery's national reputation (unfortunately, we just found out that the recognition doesn't extend to the state funding body - the gallery will not be financially supported from January next year.  But that's another story...).  I've never been to an art fair, but I've wanted to ever since reading Sarah Thornton's Seven Days in the Art World, which profiles over seven 'days' the auction, the crit, the fair, the prize, the magazine, the studio visit, and the biennale. It's an amusing snapshot at a world full of contradictions, myths, personalities, and most fascinatingly for me, the commercial art scene.  I read it in 2008, the year I commenced my PhD.  I realised that although I had an honours degree in fine arts and was a budding arts writer and artist, I really had no idea what went on in the commercial art world.  I had never been to a high-profile art auction, the Venice Biennale or an art fair, and most commercial galleries I entered made me as nervous as entering, say, an Hermès shop.

Five years on and I have a PhD, I've been to the Venice Biennale twice, and I write for Australian Art Collector. I feel more comfortable walking into a contemporary commercial art gallery (the ones with Picasso paintings on the wall like the one I ventured into on Rodeo Drive earlier this year still freak me out), and I've been to one dodgy art auction. Hell, I've even bought art from a commercial gallery, even if minor.  But I still feel very much an outsider. I am part of the academic edge of the art world; I'm a maker, a writer, a museum invigilator, an ARI committee member and, most significantly, I live at the end of the world: Hobart (or at least that's how some of the international articles about MONA like to call it). 

My first Venice Biennale visit was in 2009.  I was lucky enough to receive a travel grant from the University of Tasmania to present a paper at a conference held in conjunction with the biennale. It was during the peak visiting season - late July - and it was crowded, hot, massive, and super exciting.  My second visit was in 2011. I worked as a team leader at the Australia pavilion during the opening month.  The vernissage - the three days of private viewing before the hoi poloi are let in - was overwhelming.  It was a scene that not even Thornton's book had prepared me for.  You could smell the wealth and exclusivity. Women stumbled over the gravel giardini in their ridiculous heels, men in full suits sweated (artfully, of course) in the June sun (although one man made a point of wearing a toilet seat around his neck), and I even saw one collector walk through the curated pavilion with what was presumably their buyer, pointing at a sculpture meaningfully.  Mega yachts parked outside the giardini venue, the largest of which was occupied by a single man wearing a pair of gold speedos to match his bronzed and buffed skin. Openings were held in ornate of Venetian palaces, and the guests were largely those who had donated enough money to the art foundation in question, which essentially 'buys' you a ticket.

Will the Sydney Contemporary art fair be like the Venice Biennale? Of course not. We don't have that kind of wealth in Australia, nor the draw of the biennale itself. However, I predict I will feel like an outsider.   I'm looking forward to expanding my art education by attending the four day event.  I look forward to people watching, some of the talks (if I have time), and of course viewing the hundreds of artworks on display.

Future Pass and Cracked Culture at the Venice Biennale

Courtyard in the Abbazia, Future Pass

Yoshitomo Nara, Future Pass

In this post I want to discuss the exhibitions Future Pass: From Asia to the World and Cracked Culture? The Quest for Identity in Contemporary Chinese Art, both satellite exhibitions to the Venice Biennale.  However, the emphasis is going to be more on Future Pass – I’ve just included a brief comment on Cracked Culture because I found the links between the two quite interesting.  Both exhibitions distinguish their curatorial strategy as being from an Asian or Chinese, respectively, point of view.  However, while the catalogue and didactic texts (of Cracked Culture, in particular), implied that this ‘different perspective’ would present quite a different exhibition to shows imagined by ‘investors and curators in the west’ (Cracked Culture catalogue), both Future Pass and Cracked Culture showcased the same familiar artists, styles, and iconography that I see in, say, Australia’s Asia Pacific Triennials.

Kwon Kisoo, in Future Pass

In the garden, Cracked Culture

The thing that surprised me the most about Future Pass was the proliferation of cute.  If I’d read the short catalogue beforehand, I no doubt would have been more surprised. The curatorial statement is incredibly serious, which seems at odds to a lot of the seemingly depthless artwork on display.  The exhibition is spread over two locations: Palazzo Mangilli-Valmarana in Cannaregio, and Abbazia di San Gregorio in Dorsoduro, and each location has a number of dichotomous themes.  The Palazzo hosts the ‘Virtual/Real’, and ‘Cosplay’ [is Cosplay dichotomous in itself?], and the Abbazia focuses on ‘East/West’, ‘Past/Future’, ‘Yin/Yang’, ‘Universe/Self’.  Because I hadn’t read the catalogue beforehand (which is normal for me), I didn’t realise that the curators had based the exhibition on such sober concepts, and even after flicking through the large number of photos I took during my visit, I still can’t quite resolve the relationship between the artworks and the above mentioned philosophical notions.  

Chang Chia-Ying

Future Pass seemed overly painting heavy.  The sculptures tended to be shiny, finished, and acrylic.  Most works were self-contained, which was a departure from so many of the Biennale exhibitions that appear to favour installation or performance, ie. more immersive works of art.  The emphasis on figuration was also noticeable, mostly human figures or cute robotic shapes, anime-like figures, cartoons (including a few Disney character pastiches – something that I think was exhausted a long time ago).  

Lelya Borisenko

Angelo Volpe

Luo Dan

Chen Hongzhu

Kaikai Kiki (Chiho Aoshima)

Aldo Lanzini

Joyce Ho & Craig Quintero

at the Abbazia

Sometimes it’s good to make the viewer work a little, but there was little ambiguity in most of these works.  I felt spoon-fed. 

Palazzo

Mapi Gill

Mapi Gill

The works that I found the most interesting were those that had some relationship to their surroundings, something that happened more in the Palazzo than the Abbazia.  Without reading the catalogue, I was a little unsure whether the heads of the frescos slightly visible above the Mapi Gill paintings were deliberate.  I’m still not 100% sure, but I hope it was. Shy Gong’s Baby Angel was obviously deliberately placed against the ornate wall decorations.  It probably would’ve looked better with a more creative plinth or other presentation, but I enjoyed the relationship between the site and ‘angel’. 

Shy Gong

The rest of the works didn’t have enough of a dialogue with the palazzo to warrant the curators' strong reference to the ‘white cube’ in the catalogue.  They declare that the ‘contemporary artworks interact with, and sometimes almost seamlessly blend into, the historic buildings in which they are installed’.  Yet it seemed that most of the works sat in these buildings despite their historicism; they were plonked, not placed in any meaningful relationship to the space.  I found myself reflecting on the New Zealand Pavilion exhibition I saw in the same Palazzo at the 2009 Biennale: Francis Upritchard’s beautifully fragile figures.  They weren’t site-specific, but they sat in the space harmoniously, the elaborate surroundings subtly influencing the reading of the works.  Unlike most of the Future Pass works, Upritchard's figures worked with, not against, their surroundings.  It’s no doubt tricky to show works of art in such semiotically loaded spaces as the Palazzo, and I’ve noticed so far that almost no artworks at the Biennale attempt site-specificity (a wasted opportunity in my opinion), but when it’s stated in the catalogue that there is a deliberate ‘interaction’, it’s even more disappointing when the promise is not carried through. 

Francis Upritchard at the 2009 Venice Biennale

Cracked Culture exhibition

I sought out Cracked Culture in the back streets of Dorsoduro, because I have a particular interest in Mainland Chinese art, having studied in China.  I was disappointed in the works, and I found it difficult to swallow the strong statement of difference mentioned at the beginning of this post.  The work with water spewing out of a McDonald’s arch into a blow-up paddle pool, for instance, was about as predictable as the Mickey Mouse pastiches in Future Pass.   

However, there were a few works that I really enjoyed in Cracked Culture, such as the video projected on a pile of the university’s chairs (the exhibition was spread over two university art campuses), and the flattened fire hydrants sitting in the stairwell, although I found the absence of labels for these two works odd (the opposite problem to Future Pass’s invasive labelling habit).  I was also amused at the ‘exhibition continues’ arrows that lead to a seemingly empty classroom.  Were the confused visitors looking around the room part of an obscure performance artwork? 

a lovely label obscuring Wen San Su's chair, Future Pass

 Overall, Future Pass and Cracked Culture showcase an absurd number of artworks between them (Future Pass, for instance, had 106 artists participate).  Yet at the end of the day (literally.  It takes almost a day to cover all four locations), I felt like I could probably count the number of artworks I vaguely enjoyed on both hands.  Maybe I don’t get it, maybe you need to be ‘into’ cute to appreciate the Future Pass works, but basically, I found it difficult to swallow the hyperbole.  I wish the exhibitions had lived up to their promise. 

Grand Canal rabbit, or officially Fishing Rabbit by No2good, Future Pass

Venice Biennale: Day 2, Pavilions in San Marco

I’m in Venice for the Arts in Society Conference, which means that day two of my Venice Biennale encounter is fairly limited in terms of the amount of art I can experience (I’m not sure that the word ‘view’ is adequate for a large percentage of the artworks at the Biennale). I manage to sneak away from the conference to see a couple of nearby pavilions scattered around the western San Marco area: the Republic of Cyprus, Estonia, the Republic of Gambon, Luxembourg, Iran and the Republic of Slovenia. Of these pavilions, I’m most taken with Rumours by Socratis Socratous from Cyprus (and no it’s not just because of his name), and the Slovenian Miha Strukelj’s Interference in Process.

Stickers for the various national pavilions in San Marco, assisting victims of Venice's maze-like streets.

Socratous’ installed work is based upon a recent event in Cyprus where a number of palm trees were imported into the country to create an ‘exotic, eastern feeling to the local environment’ (artist statement). Rumours started to spread that Cobra eggs were hidden amongst the roots of these trees and that they had started to hatch. The resulting exhibition includes a large palm tree lying horizontally across the floor, videoed interviews, photographs, a collage of text, and most intriguingly, a room that is shut off from public entry by a clear acrylic barrier. The space is set up to look like a one-room home, filled with a messy combination of bed, carpets, clothes and most worryingly, an empty glass snake enclosure. At the entrance to the room, leaning up against the barrier, is equipment familiar to me as those used for snake handling. I stand at the barrier for a long time, looking for a sleek shiny body. I’m tempted to tap the glass, but after reading Harry Potter I feel guilty about disturbing the potential snake (ridiculous, I know). Then I do something that I still regret – I ask the bored looking attendant (the Cyprus pavilion is hard to find, so I’m guessing the flow of visitors may be a little slow) whether there’s actually a snake in the room. On reflection, I would have preferred not knowing.

Miha Strukelj’s work in the Slovenian pavilion is described in the Art World guide to Venice as examining “the issue of perception in five equal segments via painting and drawing.” Now, I don’t know if he changed his mind sometime between the press release and the work but the exhibition and the above description don’t seem to match up. In fact, the exhibition as a whole doesn’t seem very well resolved, but I’m taken by his drawings, which are directly applied to the walls of at least half of the difficultly shaped bottom floor. Looking at times like a road map, or if you squint your eyes you can alternatively see the outlines of buildings, the drawings lapse in and out of these line drawings and what appears to be planning grids and even scribbled mathematical equations. The wall drawing works well with the odd space, the staircase, and the hall that leads to nowhere. Unfortunately, the freestanding painted canvases and drawings that make up the rest of the exhibition are comparatively underwhelming.

Next up: Day 3 of the Venice Biennale - the Arsenale

Venice Biennale: Day 1, the Giardini

Phew, I just finished my first day at the Venice Biennale. I managed to do an impressive 10am-5pm session at the Giardini, although I would dearly like to go back to see some of the works again. The Giardini is one of the two major venues, along with the Arsenale, of the Biennale, and holds a number of the major national pavilions as well as the showcase curated exhibition.
The thing is, no one warned me about how big the Venice Biennale actually is. There seem to be about 50 other minor exhibitions/venues outside of the Arsenale and Giardini and getting to them all is going to be a task and a half.

The Biennale is a weird experience, kind of like the Disneyland of the artworld. I could even compare it to a Royal Agricultural Show experience. The pavilions in the Giardini are only used for the Biennale every two years; just as the showbag pavilion at the Sydney Royal Easter Show, for instance, is used for only a couple of weeks every year. To be honest, we all came away from the Biennale clutching showbags of sorts too. I’ve lugged back to my hotel room a Collectors ‘showbag’ from the Nordic Pavilion, complete with artist goodies, such as a print, calendar, cigarette lighter and a bronze pea. I also have my new laptop stand (generally, the catalogue de jour) – the Biennale catalogues (yes, the plural is correct). While staring at my ambiguous map in the searing midday heat today, I overheard a couple discussing their next move: “I don’t think I can be bothered with the Australian pavilion” (“Mummy, I don’t want to see the cows, they smell”). As with the RES, the portaloos were creating their own brand of smell in the sweltering Venetian heat, and the food, while not as good as a Country Woman’s Association Devonshire tea, was of similar rip-off value. But just like the show, I came away sweaty but happy, tired as a dog, yet with the knowledge that I’d learned a lot (albeit information more relevant to my field of work than knowing the names of innovative designer breeds of geese).

So, what works can I remember? (always a good test)

Well, the pick of the Pavilions, for me, are:

• The rather sinister Russian group show, with an immersive and interactive environment created by Gosha Ostretsov called Art Life or The Torments of Creative; a couple of sculptures constantly pumped with human blood by Andrei Molodkin; and Pavel Pepperstein’s Perspectives of Development, a series of humourous drawings and paintings predicting weird and wonderful monuments for the future.

• The German representative, Liam Gillick, has kitted out the German Pavillion with a maze of kitchen benches which fill the multiple rooms. The sparse wooden benches seem at odds with the rather forboding building, designed and built during Hitler’s reign. I should probably mention that each of the pavilions have been designed and built at certain times and are a mish-mash of styles from different architectural periods, some of them (such as the German pavilion) reflecting the countrys’ political and social climate of the time.

• The Hungarian Péter Forgács’ With Time – The W-Project, where the viewer is presented with dozens of portraits in various forms, from video to photographs, yet with all the faces anonymous.

• The Polish artist Krzysztof Wodiczko’s work, where projected silhouettes of window washers behind ‘frosted glass arch windows and skylight’ present the illusion that the work is on the outside of the gallery while the viewers stare out from within.

• The French pavilion, whilst popularist, has created a false dramaticism that strangely amuses me.

In the main curated exhibition, the outstanding works include Nathalie Djurberg’s Experiment, a seductive oversized sculptural garden filled with colourful weird and wonderful plants, which is accompanied by three projected erotic and rather etch claymations; Tomas Saraceno’s giant ‘spiderweb’; the once interactive series of artworks that date from the 60s by the Japanese avant-garde Gutai group; and André Cadere’s Six Barres de Bois Rond – a 1975 work where he would take these coloured sticks and install them anonymously in public spaces. Cadere is now dead, however, his sticks have been positioned (strangely with labels) throughout the main pavilion. The work in the cafeteria by Tobias Rehberger also deserves a mention. Far more exciting than the CWA show café, the cafeteria has been transformed into a psychadelic maze of wonky tables and chairs, with colourful stripes that transverse the room around rubbish bins, furniture and walls.


The Danish and Nordic Pavilions house my favourite work for the day. The modernist buildings have been fitted out to look like homes, ‘lived in’ places, which suggest a rather sinister narrative. Outside the Danish Pavilion, beyond the ‘For Sale’ sign, is a postbox telling us that ‘A. Family’ owns this house. As you wander around the house you start to make assumptions about who the people are: (fake) works by Frank Stella on the walls, flashy leather bound books, designer furniture…. then you notice that the television has been left on, the stairs in the library violently destroyed, the bedroom a black spray painted devastation. Something is clearly not right.

Moving next door to the Nordic pavilion, where a pool has been built outside the predominantly glass building, the story takes an even more alarming turn – a dead body floats on the surface of the pool. Brain working overtime, you notice the watch and cigarettes that have sunk to the bottom, and shoes and socks on the side of the pool, while the body is otherwise fully clothed. Inside the house, everything from the dirty coffee cup on the kitchen bench and pet hair on the carpet, to the used condom beside the bed is meticulously orchestrated by the collaborative artist, resulting in an engrossing and strangely humorous work.

The problem with major art exhibitions, such as the Biennale, is that you become hyper-observant, and every single object around you is interrogated as a possible work of art. The coloured bike frames chained to stationary objects around the gardens, the esky outside the Nordic Pavilion, the small box next to the toilets…
At one stage, I find myself engrossed, watching a pointy-beaked bird attack a small spring possibly from a ballpoint pen, something that I’d probably not have noticed any other time. However, my attention drew others, and soon a substantial group of people were standing behind me looking at the fire hydrant just adjacent to the bird. Although to give them credit, perhaps it was an artwork.