I'm a dual national, so, in more prosperous times, I'm often lucky enough to spend some time in my hometown (Melbourne) as well as Rometown (Rome).
Obviously, COVID19 has thrown all that out the window. I've spent almost a year now working mostly from home - feeling a bit Hitchcocky constantly looking out my rear window - as I work away on my day job and my writing. With Australia's closed border policy, and restricted movement in Italy due to the ongoing high number of COVID19 cases here, there are times when I feel neither here nor there, a sentiment that I think we've all been feeling this last year. That said, with the lifting of some restrictions here in Rome, I managed to escape out to the Palazzo delle Esposizioni to check out the 2020 Quadriennale. I did have a date back in October to see the Quadriennale with two of my most dedicated gallery loving friends, but we were sent into lockdown the day before we were due to see the show. It's billed as Fuori (=out in Italian) and, as pan-contemporary exhibitions often do, it left me delighted and perplexed (and sometimes just plain unimpressed). But that said, I was so hungry to get out of my living room and experience some culture first hand, that even when I found the artwork underwhelming, I was just happy to be seeing things through someone else's perspective for a change. As a huge exhibition designed to push the boundaries over two enormous levels, there were obviously still some gems in the line up. Among the highlights for me were Irma Blank's gorgeous indigo blue panels. They sent me back to Japan and the old ukiyo-e prints that I studied at uni. Also enjoyed the playful nature of the work by the Tomboys Don't Cry collective and the adjoining room in which Diego Gualandris did things with painting and textiles that I've never seen someone do before and Raffaela Naldi Rossano had my fatigued little brain working overtime until it eventually decrypted her powerful textual messages. Getting out and about to take in some culture or feed off of other people's ideas is not an easy prospect at this point in time. And maybe you're neither here (Rome) nor there (Melbourne). But wherever you are, you can take a free virtual tour of the Fuori show if you're interested. It's a lovely 360 of the huge exhibit that allows you to take in the cavernous spaces and representations of all the artwork in the show. Want to get out? Do it here.
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It’s that time of year when I put my curator hat back on and try and give you the benefit of my experience (and very subjective opinion) to make sure you get the most out of your visit to the Venice Biennale. The Venice Art Biennale is one of few fixed events in my calendar that I make sure I never miss. Every time I go to Venice it takes my breath away. I don’t know whether that’s because of the extortionate prices they charge for practically anything, because the city’s just so fucking beautiful or because these days I only go there for the Biennale and I find myself lost in my thoughts when I’m there. Factor in the bonus of some artporn and a few spritzes and the Art Biennale usually makes for a perfect weekend away for an art nerd like myself. For me the anticipation often starts a few months’ earlier than the actual visit. If I haven’t already begun sleuthing of my own accord I usually start getting excited about it all when I receive a couple of texts to translate for promotional purposes or for the gallery wall panels.
This year’s May You Live In Interesting Times- the fifth consecutive Biennale I’ve attended- had all the same build up of Biennales past but the actual reality of the visit marked something of a change for me. Usually after each visit I really struggle to whittle down the national pavilions to a concise best of the best. I have to go through my notes and reflect a lot in order to get my head around what I saw and what spoke the most to the curator and the artist in me. (You may or may not know that I was a curator and gallerist once upon a time). I inevitably end up feeling like I’m short changing a few artists because so many had something exceptional to offer. Worse still, I normally spend so much time being enthralled at a national level that the central, combined exhibitions feel like an obligation that I have to get through, carefully managing what little time I have left to search out the gems and filter out the distractions and all the noise. This year was almost a complete reversal for me. I found myself struggling to enjoy many of the national presentations and instead more enthralled by what was on show in the collective exhibits which under Ralph Rugoff’s curation felt unified, cohesive and engaging where in the past they were often a rambling, time consuming mess. I won’t go into Giardini and Arsenale just yet- they’ll get separate posts as per the tradition of this blog. But I will say this: if you’re planning on heading to the Biennale this year you’ll do well to manage your level of expectation, especially if you’ve visited Biennales in the past. This year there’s very little that’s playful or fun and humour is in very short supply. This year is a serious Biennale and worse still, very few artists who had a national showcase to play with managed to really hit the mark. So you’ll have to be patient and pace yourself until the highlights present themselves (and sometimes re-present themselves) and make the long, expensive vaporetto ride seem worthwhile. And of course get a leg up with my tips and suggestions. Me and my crew spent the train ride over to Arsenale chewing over some story doing the rounds on social media. I don't remember what it was but it was the reason we ended up having a pretty heavy morning chat that day.
The crux was how in Italy too many people are quick to reduce the ultimate role of women down to mother/potential mother. There's no alternative on offer and worse still, no acceptable argument against it. We noted that the obsession with woman as creator is well, lazy and limited and especially overused in the arts. I know, we could've spoken about the croissants or the scenery but some days you see something on social media and it takes you out on a tangent. Not all that different to what's on offer at the Biennale- where lots of artists are following their own tangents spurred on by themes that will be familiar if you're on social media or if you read the press. Arsenale has less national pavilions than Giardini, so there are a few honourable mentions in this round up of what I think are the ten (+1) pavilions you should focus on. Reality is the huge group show (90+ artists which will get a separate post) is going to gobble up most of your time so you'll want to make the best of whatever time is left over. I'm starting somewhere unexpected- New Zealand to be precise. Lisa Reihana (Emissaries) gets a tick for the best use of space at Arsenale. She's made a kind of panoramic video that mimicks the old scenic wallpapers popular in Europe once upon a time and fills the long narrow space that NZ has been allocated this year. The video is interesting if a little heavy handed for the Biennale. Reihana has basically brought the conversation gripping a lot of former colonial countries to life: the one in which we are starting to articulate imperialism by bringing the darkness of the acts of colonial founding fathers to light. The scale of the work is impressive and it's not too dissimilar in theme to the work of Claudia Fontes (The Horse Problem, Argentina). Fontes is using the symbols of Argentina's founding myth to address angst and frustration. Colonialism, paternalism and the overarching state narrative are not so much the white elephant in the room but a white horse who is chomping at the bit and ready to explode from frustration with the state (as represented by the national pavilion). My friends think I've taken the easy option in choosing Fontes as one of the highlights: her work here is bold, pretty and striking but I also think it's one of the more intelligent uses of space and a pretty powerful subervsive statement about the spectacle of nationalism that makes the Venice Biennale both fun and ridiculous. Spare a thought then for Tunisia. It's not had an easy time of late politically or socially. I'm giving it a special mention because despite political obstacles, they (like the NSK collective) have managed to bring a political protest to the Biennale. The Absence of Paths is an installation: a booth where attendants will issue anyone a passport (a feesa). Its value is questionable and its blue ink (required for your fingerprint) frustratingly difficult to remove afterwards. Its a simple bureaucratic act- a passport or a visa issued instantly - which offers comment on the refugee crisis and it happens so quickly that you wind up thinking (and trying to wipe off the stain of bureaucracy) only afterwards. There are few things that I love more in Italy than the Venice Biennale.
I feel an immense sense of privilege that I have been able to visit it four times since I've been here. Each year I do my best to write up my thoughts in the hopes that my impressions can help other visitors make choices about what to focus on- or give people who have no plans on visiting a down to earth curator's view on things. There are 29 national pavilions in addition to the group show at the Venice Pavilion here at Giardini and this post is dedicated to my favourites. A separate post about Arsenale- the other main complex of pavilions will follow. About a third of the national pavilions at Giardini were offering up what I thought were brilliant or thought provoking work. The ten that I've selected here are more or less in line with the selections of my Biennale crew- this is the fourth Biennale we've visited together and although we usually bicker like sad old toffs on the train ride home this year we pretty much had consensus with our choices. There were a lot of disappointing exhibits on offer at Giardini- especially from Great Britain (too art school), Spain and Holland (too much video and not engaging at that) which are usually my favourites- leaving me with the idea that this year it's Arsenale that is really worth the extra time and effort. But a visit to Giardini will still blow you away if you spend more of your time at the following national pavilions (in no particular order): 1. Germany 2. Japan 3. South Korea 4. Hungary 5. Russia 6. Australia 7. Brazil 8. Israel 9. Greece 10. Czech Republic More detailed comments about these pavilions and the artists after the jump. What a busy year. My job has eaten away much of the time I usually spend writing and researching, but a boy's gotta pay the bills... and have something that resembles a social life. A boy's also gotta travel. See things. Get inspired. Aside from having a bit of a Roman summer, I'm moving around the country a bit, visiting people and places and getting back into the swing of seeing as many exhibitions as possible. Recently I finally got around to visiting Macro's Street Art exhibition Cross The Streets. I had rocked up to the opening night but it was a mess and there were too many people and too little organisation to make it worth my while. So I headed back and visited - curious to see the work of a friend of mine who has a substantial number of works in the exhibit. As chuffed as I was for him, I'm a bit indifferent about institutions hosting street art, and about how selective the exhibit was. All I will say is that you can't have a major street art show in Rome, which in recent years has become a major centre for open air/street art and not include the works of Hogre. That said, I did love the work of Lucamaleonte (pictured). His tumblr feed here. Lushsux continues to make a splash with his series of selfie murals around Australia. No plans to cover up the latest in Geelong, because they're on private property. What's more interesting is the hit/miss pixelation of the images appearing across various mainstream news sites. In regards to the photos being used, I'm curious to know who it is that's, erm, censoring them? Newsflash. An academic marketing study found that millennials don't relate to Madonna anywhere near as much as they do people like Zayn Malik, Adele or Taylor Swift. Geez, that's university time and money spent well. As expected, Zayn will land in at No.1 on the US album chart with 157,000 "equivalent album units." That's basically Billboard short for streaming totals plus 112,000 actual album sales. What it takes for a major #1 hit album these days it seems. Mind you, someone should tell the university of Southern California that this time last year Madonna made it to #2 with 116,000 actual sales of Rebel Heart. Perhaps millennials are not yet the be all and end all. Stuart Haygarth makes a compelling visual statement that should encourage you to pick up any trash you see at the beach. Beautiful book project unveiled here. We're living in desperate times. These are desperate times my dear. There's no way out of here. There's no way out my dear. - Back to the Wall, Divinyls. WHEN it comes to contemporary artists and their heavily oiled machines, very few currently have the kind of press pull that China's Ai Weiwei does. I have watched him with some fascination over recent years. His studio has produced some thought provoking work, and the current exhibition at Melbourne's NGV which pairs him with Andy Warhol certainly offers some food for thought. Anyone that knows of Ai Weiwei will know that he is a dissident extraordinaire. Often, this has worked in his favour. The relentless hounding he received from Chinese authorities earned him all kinds of empathy from across the world, art lovers and beyond. Earlier this week, the new hardline Danish government's announced that it would seize the assets of asylum seekers in order to cover the housing and food costs. This against a backdrop of violence directed at immigrants in Scandinavia. Ai Weiwei's respponse? A quick, swift decision of his own to close his current exhibition at Copenhagen's Faurschou Foundation. In this case, the gallery publicly backed the artist's decision. And let's face it: such a powerful, symbolic gesture on the artist's behalf could only curry more favour with the public, leaving the gallery with no choice to support such a move. (Not suggesting that the Faurschou Foundation don't support Ai Weiwei's move, but as a former gallerist I also know that there are times when it is churlish to go against an artist's decisions - regardless of what agreement or contract might be in place). It was a great, symbolic move on Weiwei's part. Subsequent to this, Ai Weiwei has announced that he has opened a new studio - in Lesbos, one of the Greek islands located in one of the preferred migratory route into Europe. But the existence of the studio in Lesbos, staffed by volunteers, students and artists has been marked by Ai Weiwei's presence in the area. And in addition to other advocacy, Weiwei has tried to pull of a photographic stunt which hasn't exactly gone down as well as his Danish actions. You see, Weiwei has chosen to re-enact one of last year's most polarising photographs: that of the drowned Syrian toddler who washed up on Turkish shores. In case you can't work it out from seeing the picture, he has decided to reenact the role himself. Now, you can admire such a call to arms and celebrate the artist for bringing light to the issue. But the thing is, we are well and truly aware of the human crisis that is taking place in and around the Mediterranean. Ai Weiwei, in re-enacting this photo, in my mind, is rather cynically trying to ingratiate himself into the wider argument and has done so in a completely insensitive, sensationalist way. In a lot of cases I would probably applaud someone in his position for being brave enough to use sensationalism under the circumstances where we need to be shocked into action. But last year's image, for good and bad reasons, became one of the most powerful images in the recent history of photography and journalism. It is so well recognised and well known, that a reenactment is completely unnecessary, and dare I say, a poor move on the artist's part, despite those who took to twitter to laud it as being powerful. If anything, the end result of the reenactment is the cheapening of the tragic events that took place last year (and that continue to take place). That photo European polarised governments into action but not until there was intense debate about how appropriate it was to publish the image in the media, and what that ultimately meant for the grieving family and families like it. If you are one of the world's most recogniseable artists with a pool of talent at your disposal, and this is the most creative and engaging way you think you can bring attention to the plight of Syria and beyond, then I think you need someone by your side to tell you to stop, take a step back and rethink things. Far better in my mind were the series of Instagram pictures that Ai Weiwei shared which were very much human and not at all a mistaken form of self aggrandizement. They are just as powerful and allow people to draw their own conclusions about the plight of people who are escaping the war torn parts of the Middle East. So, in the space of about a week, and against two very different European backgrounds, Ai Wei Wei has quickly gone from the sublime to the ridiculous. And other than promote the fact that he has a new southern European studio in operation, he's achieved little more than a dent to the goodwill he has earned when he himself has been the target of injustice, rather than of pantomine drama. Does art still have the capacity to heal? I'd like to think so. But as always, it still has the ability to reflect the world that we live in, the world that we want, and the mistakes that we make that separate these two spheres.
This image is perhaps one of the most powerful I've seen by an artist in a long time. It's by Imranovi, a Syrian artist who has been displaced by the ongoing conflict and who is now based in the UAE. Imranovi and the upcoming pop up exhibition in London of his work is covered over at CNN. More of his work over at his tumblr page. Event Horizon, a city wide installation in Central, Hong Kong by Sir Antony Gormley has got more than a few Hong Kong residents hot under the collar. What's the issue? Is it that the 31 lifesize and anatomically correct bodies are basically like illegal immigrants? No, that's not the case: they've been commissioned by the British Council and paid for with the public purse. And they'll be around until May 2016. And the statues have all been modelled off of Gormley himself, so technically it's just one person we're talking about. Sculpture I mean. Sheesh. Is it that the placement of a few of the statues atop of tall buildings set off a spate of panic from some residents who feared they were witnessing people who were attempting to plunge to their death from great heights? No... Well, that happened in the sense that police allegedly received calls but these boys are a bit too stable to do anything rash. And besides before arriving in HK they were temporarily resident in Rotterdam, NYC and in Brazil. They're way too street smart for that nonsense. Hong Kong is full of sophisticated people and more and more is becoming seen as one of the main artistic centres of Asia- not just the financial one it has long been. That said, culturally there isn't much of a precedent for these kinds of works in this area. So they're pointing out the statues - 31 of them in a city that's home to 7 million people (?- fact checker?) are variously creating a nuisance, an obstacle or other health and safety issues. Basically that the presence of these figures is interrupting the bustling nature or Central. Remember this is Hong Kong, not Rome or Rio. People move faster in HK, they've got things to do, don't you know? As much as the idea of these sculptures has to be a little confronting for some, I've a feeling that Gormley's goal of having residents reassess their setting, and looking at the urban environment they live in with a sense of wonderment will win out. The idea that they attract the eye up and down and all around the city, with each statue being visible to another, sounds like a winning city walk in the making to me. It's not that I'm sorry. I'm not. But its coming up to six years that I've been writing this blog, and as a result, there's room to revise some ideas from time to time. Not for example on selfie sticks, or on anything Vatican-y (except Ratzinger and Padre Georg: I loved them: such a cute couple!). But a while back I posted about how Taschen and Gisele Bundchen had teamed up for a Gisele coffee table book. A very expensive, don't head over to the bookshop if you're having trouble with the rent or your mortgage payment kind of book. I mean, I didn't say it was going to be a flop or anything, but I guess I was questioning the whole Why? of it all as Tim Gunn would say. Well, we needn't worry for GB. Girl's gonna have no problems paying her rent and in selling out her ludicrously overpriced book she has proven that there are a lot of people with some warped priorities. Like your coffee table book could feed a village kind of shit, but what would I know? But really, was there really any doubt its run was going to sell out? Supermodels are recession proof! Someone needs to bottle their essences and study that stuff at the Harvard Business School to better prepare us for when there are no arms sellers left in the world to keep the economy spinning. (I know that sounds a little Silence of the Lambs but I don't mean it in that way). Anyway, while I'm at it... Almost six years ago I moved to Rome. And I was immediately struck by how street art was still in its infant stages even though graffiti per se has existed in Rome since, well, Roman times. Back then when I posted about the burgeoning scene I thought it was going to take a while for Rome to get to a point where its edginess as a city was matched by what you see on its walls. Well, lo and behold. I sit corrected. When the Huffington Post calls you out for being the emerging European capital of street art, you can start to believe it. It's not really mentioned in the article, but there are a few reasons why certain parts of Rome are becoming open air galleries. On the one hand, galleries like the Wunderkammern in Tor Pignatara and the colletive Laszlo Biro - (hi boys) - have had a huge hand in this. They paved the way for much of East Rome's street art/urban renewal by encouraging large scale projects in conjunction with residents and the local municipal offices. Or by simply producing great, very graphic friendly work (as in the case of the LB crew). In addition, a lot of Roman suburbs are the subject of wear and tear. Asking a tenants committee if an artist can have an external wall in exchange for its repair and adornment is a no brainer in cash strapped Rome. Keep an eye out though for other emerging hot spots in Italy. Palermo and Genova are the cities to watch for if you ask me. They've got some great up and coming scenes and artists that rival what's happening in Rome and Milan. In the meantime, you can find Laszlo Biro here and the Wunderkammern here. |
Dave
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Dave Di Vito is a writer, teacher and former curator.He's also the author of the Vinyl Tiger series and Replace The Sky.
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