On a high tide of art
The Age
Saturday June 13, 2009
The Biennale opens doors into some extraordinary worlds, writes Gabriella Coslovich. THE spectacle begins the moment I arrive at Venice's Marco Polo airport. I am here to witness the 53rd Venice Biennale - my first - the art calendar's most glamorous and prestigious event, a Goliath exhibition that sprawls across the city, this year with a record 77 countries jostling for the attention of critics and collectors.Venice is as much the star of the Biennale as the art itself: the lagoon city is an art-and-sound installation nonpareil. In the coming days I will wade barefoot, water lapping at my calves, with scores of other camera-wielding tourists, in a flooded San Marco square, laughing at the absurd beauty of it all, knowing full well I should be horrified. I will see the waters of the lagoon sweeping over the stone pavement outside my hotel, depositing pungent clumps of seaweed, as a huge, orange moon rises over the Giudecca canal. I will cram into a vaporetto just as a snap storm hits, getting pelted by rain, my jeans wet and heavy against my thighs, before being invited to shelter in the driver's cabin."Ah, the power of women," he will say, and I will laugh, and wonder how on earth so many people could be legally packed into the vessel, jammed up against the hip-height barriers, standing room only. Surely there are regulations against this kind of thing? There are, the driver will tell me, but you know, people push and shove and on it goes.But first, the battle for a water taxi. A prominent Melbourne gallery director advised me to hire one - it's pricey, she said, but quick, just what you need after the exhausting 24-hour slog from Melbourne. Except nothing in Italy is ever that simple. At the water taxi stand I see crowds and chaos. The ticket booth is closed, and no one can tell me where to buy a ticket. In animated Italian (is there any other kind?) I haggle with an official looking man on a pier. From the corner of my eye I note that I am being filmed in all my gesticulatory glory. The cameraman is from the English magazine Monocle, also here to cover the Biennale. The circus has begun.The next few days will be a blur of art, fashion, life. I will traipse through the dusty gravel paths of the Giardini, the most important terrain of the Biennale, sampling the national pavilions, I will trudge over to the evocative brick warehouses of the Arsenale, the old dockyards, for more art, and wander the city, trying to find some of the 44 collateral events scattered through its labyrinthine streets, all the while being as entertained by the eavesdropping and, of course, the fashion. (European men are marvellously flamboyant. They will team supple gold leather moccasins with designer jeans and look effortlessly chic, they will pair black-and-white horizontal striped sweaters with black-and-white checked pants, and pull it off. If only Australian men were so adventurous.)This year's Biennale is curated by the Swedish and - according to the Italian daily Il Gazzettino, rather attractive - Daniel Birnbaum. Its theme is Making Worlds (Fare Mondi), and the best of the art on show is indeed like entering another world, as transporting, beguiling, surprising, moving and even at times as grotesque as the host city itself. But the responses to the art are as diverse as the people viewing it.I am warned that English artist Steve McQueen's video work, Giardini, being screened in the British Pavilion, is excruciating in its minimalism. But I love it. The 30-minute film captures the shadow side of the Giardini, the not-so-glamorous side of Venice, during a wet, wintry day, when the Biennale crowds have long gone. The Giardini take on an entirely different hue, enthralling in their gloom. They are neglected and empty, yet bristling with art and life of a different kind - an orange insect inside a yellow flower, a spider whose markings evoke the Byzantine buildings of Venice, spidery black greyhounds who scavenge among the garbage, men who meet in the darkness.I love too Fiona Tan's video works in the Dutch Pavilion. Tan, who describes herself as a "professional foreigner" was born in Indonesia, of an Australian mother and Chinese father. She has lived in Australia and Germany, has been a resident of the Netherlands for the past 20 years, and exemplifies, in many ways, the blurring boundaries of the national pavilions. (An English artist, Liam Gillick, is being shown in the German Pavilion, but more on that later.)Tan's main video, Disorient, features the words of Venice's most famous merchant and traveller, Marco Polo. Narration from his 13th century writings The Travels is juxtaposed against contemporary images of the Asian countries to which he travelled. Polo's tales of "idolaters and savages", of exotic pearls, spices and musk-producing beasts, clash with contemporary footage of polluted, over-populated and desperately poor areas in Asia. Polo's description of Baghdad - "It is a great centre for the study of the law of Mahomet and of necromancy, natural science, astronomy, geomancy, and physiognomy. It is the largest and most splendid city in all these parts" - is contrasted with images of the city being bombed by American forces.Tan's work will resonate for the rest of the day. Her images of poor, dirty children holding out bottles to be filled with brown water will echo when I see the hands of Biennale guests holding out plastic glasses, jostling for free prosecco.In the opening days, guests will be just as eager to score other free merchandise. The Collectors showbag from the popular Danish and Nordic pavilions quickly becomes a collector's item.It is emblazoned with quotes from Sarah Thornton's book, Seven Days in the Art World, killer lines such as "At the Biennale, you're on a marathon hunt for a new masterpiece. You want to see a new face and fall in love. It's like speed dating."And it is indeed a little like that. Although sometimes the "new face" refuses to flirt. What are we to make of Liam Gillick's bare pine kitchen cabinets in the German pavilion? Gillick's work is frustratingly enigmatic. Later, I will read that its intention is "to resonate in opposition to the corrupted grandeur of the German pavilion, which was designed without lavatories, kitchen or any area to rest."There is more subversive art play going on at the pavilion of the Czech and Slovak republics, where artist Roman Ondak has created a garden inside the space that replicates the gardens outside.The imposing, neo-classical facade of the American pavilion, meanwhile, is encircled with veteran artist Bruce Nauman's neon signs. The neons alternate between two opposing ideas, flashing the word gluttony then temperance, justice then avarice, envy then hope, anger then fortitude, and so on.At first, I read the words as an ironic comment on the extremes of the United States. But after days at the Biennale, the neons begin to mock me. I am experiencing gluttony of the senses, and my fortitude is waning, as I queue for art, food, drink, toilets, vaporetti.How to judge what is best in this overwhelming array of art? I keep hearing Italians use the word "bello" - "Senti, ma le cose piu belle che abbiamo visto?" one woman asks her partner. "So, what are the most beautiful things we've seen?"Perhaps beauty is not such a bad criteria - beauty can also be about craft, innovation, conceptual wit, poignancy.The greatest beauty is not saccharine. Australian artist Ken Yonetani's installation Sweet Barrier Reef, made from sugar, is beautiful but speaks of environmental degradation, strangely fitting in a city that is sinking, whose waterways are polluted, and is increasingly experiencing "aqua alta", high water.What are the most beautiful worlds I saw? Among them were Dale Chihuly's glass garden, Mille Fiori, outside the Venetian pavilion at the Giardini, and the glass exhibition at the Istituto Veneto di Scienza, Lettere ed Arti, where the building itself and its ornate centuries-old Murano glass chandeliers threatened to upstage the art.In the Arsenale, Chinese artist Chu Yun's Constellation No. 3 charmed me with its wit; a universe of multi-coloured stars in a darkened room, created by the flashing indicator lights of appliances such as mobile phones, fridges, microwaves, watercoolers, photocopiers.American artist Pae White's installation mesmerised with its craft and innovation, a world that replicated the ornate chandeliers and opulence of Venetian palazzi, but using "poor" materials such as bird seed and clay. Mesmerising in a more disturbing way was the X-rated shadow puppet show of Hong Kong artist Paul Chan, Sade for Sade's Sake.After a week's viewing, there is still much more to see. The Biennale is the art world equivalent of la grande bouffe, a degustation with a vertiginous procession of courses. Even the cafe bar in the Palazzo delle Espozioni in the Giardini (formerly the Italian Pavilion) has been taken over by an artist - the German Tobias Rehberger - who has transformed it into a pulsating clash of geometrical black-and-white stripes and tables of fluorescent orange and yellow. He won a Golden Lion for his efforts.Venice itself is the sorbet between courses. When the point of visual saturation is reached, a stroll through the ordinary extraordinariness of Venice replenishes the heart and mind.After so much "art", it is comforting to see the artlessness of clothes hanging on lines extended between centuries old buildings, to hear the cacophonous soundscape of myriad clashing church bells, the constant chug of vaporetti, and a builder singing that Neapoletan classic O Sole Mio, as the sun glitters on the canal and a rat scurries through debris.For the Venetians, the art of life goes on.The 53rd Venice Biennale, Fare Mondi, Making Worlds, until November 11.
© 2009 The Age
