Visit of the 18th Biennale of Sydney
IDAIA’s shares one of it’s marketing team members’ opinion about the 18th Biennale of Sydney.
Last week end, I finally went to what one of my friends calls this winter’s ‘must-do’ : the 18th Biennale of Sydney in Cockatoo Island.
For those who don’t know – like me before going there – what is exactly Cockatoo, it’s Sydney Harbour’s biggest island, which was previously used as imperial prison, industrial school, reformatory and gaol. But from June to September 2012, it is known as one of the 18th Biennale of Sydney’s venues.
Titled all our relations, the contemporary art festival offers the opportunity to have a glimpse at artists’ works coming from all over the world. And it offers this opportunity to EVERYONE, everything being free : talks, entries, performances and even the ferry to go to Cockatoo. Four other beautiful places are hosting the Biennale among which the AGNSW and the MCA.
By choosing Cockatoo, the goal was to continue the ‘tradition of presenting works in alternative spaces, which take the audience’s experiences of art out of the traditional museum and gallery spaces and into special environments.’ And, what can I say ? It’s stunning !
The old docks and sheds, the sheel steel and the rust give the island a particular atmosphere, both abandonned and vibrant at the same time. There, you just wander, enter in a disused room and discover one of the dozens of artworks exhibited on the island.
The gap between such a rough space and art, that can be fragile and delicate, is omnipresent here. It’s definitely another way to dicsover contemporary art, far from the usual four whites walls. It also allows to forget one’s prejudices.
As usually you will like some artworks and don’t like/don’t understand others. That’s part of the game ! I found the colourful textile banners of Chilian Cecilia Vicuña – which are actually a poem, only it’s not written but in space – really beautiful and moving. I also loved the letters, taken from sentences of Proust’s ‘A la recherche du temps perdu’ and spread by Khadija Baker in a courtyard, because it was an invitation to take part of her artwork, creating new words on the floor.
Aboriginality is also present in Cockatoo thanks to Jonathan Jones who ‘explores relationships between Indigenous traditions, ideas of space, between the community and the individual, the personal and public, the historical and the contemporary’ and to Euraba Artits, who ‘have taken traditional European papermaking methods and have combined this with their own contemporary indigenous sensibilities’.
Julie T’Seyen, communication and marketing assistant