It’s mega exhibition season in Europe and lots of Australians have made the pilgrimage to visit one or more of: the Venice Biennale; Documenta 12 in Kassel and the Munster Sculpture Project in Germany; and Art 38 Basel in Switzerland; which all coincide once every ten years or so. While overseas for other reasons, NAVA’s Executive Director popped in to Venice to take in the 52nd International Art Exhibition Think With the Senses – Feel With the Mind: Art in the Present Tense, curated by American Robert Storr and bringing together the work of about 100 artists. There can be little disagreement that Venice is one of the world’s great venues for showcasing an array of art from around the world.
To get to the two main exhibition sites, one of life’s great experiences is to hop on a vaparetto and cruise down the Grand Canal marvelling at the beauties of a car-free Renaissance city. The unifyingly enormous space of the Corderie in the Arsenale with its rhythmic huge stone columns marching down the interior, provide an impressive context for the work of about half of the participating artists. Most of the rest are located in the thirty national pavilions of the Giardini. In the Australian Pavilion is an installation containing Daniel von Sturmer’s delicate kinetic sculptural videos while Susan Norrie’s and Callum Morton’s work is being shown in other locations around the city. Shaun Gladwell’s delightfully choreographed skateboard gymnastics video was chosen for the Italian Pavilion and Rosemary Laing’s tough photographic comment on detention centres caught people’s attention in the Cordieri.
This text appears in a regular monthly column NAVA writes for Arts Hub, the online home for arts workers. To read the full column, click here to visit Arts Hub News, Analysis and Comment.
