A total riot

The Last Riot, the Caravaggio inspired video, currently on exhibition at the City Gallery and featuring Russia’s best-known male model Danilya Polyakov, is apparently in an edition of three. Even the Russian Group AES+F (Tatiana Arzamasova, Lev Evzovich, Evgeny Svyatsky and Vladimir Fridkes) must have been surprised at its incredible success at the 2007 Venice Biennale, which resulted in two of the copies of the edition winding up in Australia. The one on show in Wellington comes from Dick Quan’s Sydney collection, the other Aussie copy went to Tasmanian collector David Walsh. The third copy was variously described as having been “purchased” or having been “gifted” to the Tate in London. Not so according to a correction in this month’s Art Newspaper. “In fact no such offer has been made and Tate has not acquired the work.” So now it looks like there is the chance for someone else in the Lucky Country to snap up their own copy of The Last Riot and claim the trifecta. Meanwhile, back in Moscow, and possibly regretting they had only made three saleable copies of their runaway success, AES+F have produced Last Riot 2, images from The Last Riot in the handier format of photographs on canvas with panoramas priced at $US150,000.