They killed Kenny

There are always some good things to see at the Sydney Biennale and sometimes, as in the outstanding 16th edition curated by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev in 2008, many, many great things. But this year it’s a struggle to find much excitement. Artistic director Stephanie Rosenthal titled her biennale after William Gibson's well-worn phrase, ‘the future is already here - it’s just not evenly distributed’. Presumably she intended to claim some sci-fi cred but went on to undercut it by seven heavy-handed curatorial themes: Transition, the Real, Translation, Spirits etc One theme or “Embassy of thought’ as they are coyly titled per venue. This gave rise to all sorts of awkward diplomatic analogies over the weekend: attaches, amabassadors, visas, passports etc. Why a major art event would want to define itself by conventional diplomatic stereotypes is anyone’s guess.

The extraordinary character of Cockatoo Island has usually made it one of the highlights of the Biennale. This time round even the history and atmosphere of this world heritage site were dampened. Lee Bull was the lead attraction. No slouch when it comes to filling space, she was given a massive 2,500 meters (about the half the size of the new MCA extension) and gave it a decent go: there's an enormous silver dirigible, an enormous inflatable globe, enormous draped sheets of figured plastic, enormous loops of light bulbs. Trouble is, trying to fill such enormous industrial spaces sets up a competition a single artist can't win. Bul's willing to be vulnerable seemed driven by the space rather than commanding it. Although the work does appear more convincing in photographs, in reality it looks alarmingly like the replica NYC in Charlie Kaufman's 2008 movie Synecdoche, New York.

William Forsyth did rather better by suspending hundreds of plumb bobs swinging from a moving frame and Ming Wong nailed the sci-fi theme with monsters, robots and rockets from the history of Chinese cinema. The odd thing though about the Cockatoo experience this time was how few works there were to see. It's a mission to get out to Cockatoo and you have to wonder why the Biennale was dispersed over so many venues when there is so much opportunity there. Then there was the lack of labels, signage and the impossibility of connecting the numbers on the Biennale map with the buildings in front of you. Add to this confusion an annoying number of Biennale staff swishing past on golf carts tooting people watching videos out of the way (sorry Joyce Campbell) and we'd have to say this time the Cockatoo Island experience really lacked its usual energy and focus. If you're thinking of visiting, consider waiting a few weeks to give the Biennale's admin time to get themselves organized and the island venues signed and labeled.

Great Dane

‘Dane, Dane, Dane.’ It’s a moaning sing-song voice coming from the second floor of the MCA showing works from the Biennale of Sydney. We know Dane Mitchell has works in the Biennale but we thought they were at the Art Gallery of NSW. ‘Dane, Dane, Dane.’ There it is again. Maybe it’s one of Dane Mitchell’s ghost works. Then we see a dancer and a guy who is actually singing ‘Dane, Dane, Dane’ to the viewers and yes, it is NZ’s own Dane Mitchell he is referring too. We know this because he starts singing ‘Dane Mitchell’ which is a complete giveaway. Turns out it is a work by the choreographer Adam Linder who is Australian and now based in Sydney. For five hours a day he delivers choreographic services and the  writer working with him, Holly Childs, has put Dane into the script for Linder’s performance. The dancer slides across the floor, ‘Dane Dane, Dane.’ Contemporary art, you gotta love it.

The shock of the new

The artists selected for the 2016 Sydney Biennale have just been announced and it looks as though there are just two New Zealanders, Dane Mitchell and Joyce Campbell. Great news for Mitchell who will be showing in the Art Gallery of New South Wales and Campbell whose venue is still to be announced but (yes, there is a but) this is sure as hell not the six or so NZers you might reasonably expect to be in a regional exhibition like this. It used to be pretty standard that five or six NZers would be included but this is the second time New Zealand has been virtually ignored by the Sydney Biennale curator. 

This time round it's Stephanie Rosenthal who has done the lack of honours. If all the artists were listed without their originating countries you might find such a concern provincial but that's not the case so the Biennale is certainly counting. The weird part is that the Biennale has been running an active campaign in New Zealand to raise money for the event. It the blurb it even claims to 'showcase New Zealand artists in our region'. Well yes, we are certainly in the same region, but for our artists to be 'showcased' they have to be seen. The selection of one NZer in 2014 could be described as a misfortune, to have just two in 2016 feels like carelessness.  

LATER: GREG BURKE tempers the shrill cry of injustice: "In my short time at CNZ there was one biennale with just one Kiwi (Peryer) and one with a record 6 for the time (including Campbell). Prior to that the record had been 4, but was more likely to be 2."

Some of the folding to help straighten things out

Last year’s Sydney Biennale had a bad run with its principal sponsor pulling out after artist protested their relationship with detention centers on Nauru Island. Now a new sponsor has come forward with $A600,000 plus for the 2016 Biennale. Keir Neilson set up the Platinum fund and his wife Judith started the White Rabbit Gallery in Sydney. The total budget for the Biennale of Sydney is around $A10 million. You can read the full story here.

Don’t follow the money

The relationships between institutions, funding bodies, artists and money are now so seamless and so comfortable it’s not often that the surface is ever cracked. But that’s certainly what happened when it was revealed that the main sponsor of the Biennale of Sydney is connected to the construction and management of off shore refugee camps. Nine artists withdrew which in turn lead to The Chairman of the Sydney Biennale and Transfield Holdings, Luca Belgiorno-Nettis resigning to allow it to distance itself from Transfield’s funding. The response from the Australian Minister of the Arts Queensland’s senator Brandis was predictably brutal pulling out "disgraceful" and "shabby" and Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull dredged up ''vicious ingratitude.''
 
More compelling was Brandis’ threat to withdraw Government funding to punish their ungrateful response and any other arts bodies that thought they could question commercial largess in the form of sponsorship.

In fact it looks like the Biennale has kept the Transfield money for this year anyway, so much for their public announcement to “end our partnership with Transfield effective immediately.” Given that the Transfield contribution only represents just over six percent of the Biennale budget (around $634,000 a year) it is pretty hard to see the Biennale falling over through a parting of company. 

But in the end there's no clean cash to be had (it is after all the main sponsors of the Biennale the Australian Government who are responsible for the camps). As one of those early Greek guys said, “There is nothing in the world so demoralizing as money.”

Images: Left Biennale sponsor Transfield's logo and right camp construction and services company Transfield Services logo

Biennale news

“We believe that the campaign is well intentioned but misguided….Many of us at the Biennale hold strong views on the refugee issue….We would not knowingly associate with the abuse of a disadvantaged group like the refugees. We believe that any action to hinder the Biennale would damage the ability of 94 artists to exhibit their work and gain exposure for their talent. That would be regrettable.”

A spokesperson for the Sydney Biennale’s responds to a Guardian reporter’s questions around lead sponsor Transfield’s ongoing involvement with refugee detention centers on Nauru and Manus Islands.

You can read the full article here and a range of responses to the issue from artists and others here.
And Biennale curator Juliana Engberg's response here

Future proofing

OTN isn’t so keen on (#didn'tgetroundtomakingone) annual that-was-the-year-that-was lists, but what-do-you-reckon-will-happen-this-year lists? Now that’s a different story.

Steady on
Around the end of April the Walters Prize selection committee will produce a more conventional list of older finalists

Drawing the line
More university art schools will come under severe pressure from the Government via the Tertiary Education Commission to reduce staff and student numbers

HK OK
Dealers will swing their art fair energy from Europe to Asia

Still life
A lot of art will be made and a heap of museum time and money expended to glorify the completely senseless slaughter of World War I

Man alone
A lone New Zealander will slope over to Sydney to install his work in the 18th Biennale of Sydney

Boy oh boy
More men will get more solo shows in the public art museums

Time Lord
In Auckland T J McNamara will ease into his 47th year of reviewing art for the NZ Herald

Painting by numbers
More figurative paintings will create more auction records

Northern exposure
Te Papa will start wishing it had never come up with the idea of putting an outreach gallery into South Auckland

How great thou art
Everyone will be super excited by the awesome art stuff that will be tweeted throughout the year #whoa #thrilling #because

But who’s counting
Over the net will publish its 4,000th post

The Scottish play
The Auckland Art Gallery will announce the mother of all art works is to hang in its foyer

On reflection
The Govett-Brewster will find out whether or not that shiny mirror surface on the Len Lye Centre is feasible and, if it is, whether it’s actually a good idea

Slice and dice
Creative New Zealand’s budget will be spread even thinner across a wider range of art forms

Movement
Christchurch Art Gallery will straighten up

Back to the future

“I dream of an art world without pointless parochialism,” was one response to our suggestion that the selection of only one artist from NZ for the Sydney Biennale was unreasonably low. That got us thinking. Just when you think the global/local argument has died, there it is, dragging itself up out of the swamp. The reason is that for all its global marketing trappings, Biennale art is surprisingly localised. Every artist bio, every catalogue entry, carefully states not only where these artists live, but also where they were born. There's perhaps an element of pay-off for national funders of specific artists but more importantly knowing where someone is from captures a whole lot of context in a single fact.

OK, back to Juliana Engberg's selections for next year's Sydney Biennale. Yes, she is one of Australia’s most dynamic curators and yes, her idea for the Biennale is global enough (“an exploration of the world and contemporary aesthetic experience”), but the artists she has selected are not born and do not live in a very large part of the globe: Russia, Africa, South America, India or China. Sorry BRIC that love affair is being left to Queensland.

This Biennale is local, it's just its local is Europe and down-under. Of the 90 artists 61 live or work in Europe (84 percent of those are from the EU) and 19 are from Australia. The rest: nine Swiss, half a dozen Norwegians, four Chinese one of whom lives in Europe, a Japanese living in New York, an Egyptian a couple of Canadians and a couple from the USA etc. In sum if they’re not in Australia (or the one artist living in NZ) they live or work in the Northern Hemisphere.

As Biennales usually do, this one also emphasises its expansiveness boasting “a vibrant list of more than 90 artists from 31 countries." To put it nicely this is blowing smoke. The closest we've seen to it is the 1979 Biennale curated by Nick Waterlow. That one was called European dialogue.

Image: countries not represented in the upcoming Biennale of Sydney in red.

Select

The names of the artists participating in the 19th Biennale of Sydney next year were announced last night. There were 90 of then showing across five venues. The director of the event Juliana Engberg has called her Biennale You Imagine What You Desire but strangely this is possibly the first Sydney Biennale to not include a single New Zealand artist (well, one - see below). Strangely, because Engberg has been a strong supporter of NZ artists and art. She was even Senior Curator of the Art & Industry Biennale in Christchurch in 2002.

There is of course no rule that says New Zealand has to be represented in the Biennale but this one seems to have a penchant for smaller nations (e.g. five artists from Norway, seven from Switzerland and three from Scotland) and for this part of the world (20 artists from Australia).

And Engberg was unable to find a single significant New Zealand artist to contribute to her theme of “celebrating the power of artistic imagination”? Come on.

There were some warning signs. Back in May Engberg did visit New Zealand and her adventures are covered on her Biennale blog. No artists got a mention but in Auckland she gave top marks to a meal at Sunday Painters and in Wellington was finally able to answer a pressing question about where all the sausage dog door stoppers have gone “They’re all over here in New Zealand’s land of the long white cloud and sensible home making”.

Creative New Zealand is listed among the “Cultural Funders” of Engberg’s Biennale so we assumed they must have paid for Engberg’s trip. On checking the funding lists though we can’t find any evidence of CNZ funding for the BofS. We’ll ask them what’s the story and get back to you.
(A couple of readers have pointed out that there is one New Zealander included, Shannon Te Ao. We were fooled by the fact that Shannon was born in Australia but apologies to him) - Thanks for letting us know B and J

Shannon Te Ao

And the best sign...

...on Cockatoo Island at the Biennale of Sydney

Islanders

The Biennale of Sydney has usually included New Zealand artists in the mix although they’ve been pretty stingy about it considering how close NZ is connected to Australian culture. This year’s Biennale has three of them: Peter Robinson, Tiffany Singh and Sriwhana Spong. If you can get there you can see all three on Cockatoo Island (Singh also has an installation in Pier 3).  

Cockatoo Island was first used as a Biennale venue in 2008 when this year’s Documenta curator Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev was artistic director. It’s a multi-layered place of spectacle and history and has become the highlight of the event. A free ferry gets you there in just 15 minutes and Sydney weather being what it is, the walk round the buildings, along the wharfs, through tunnels and up long flights of stairs creates a dramatic experience. 

Sneaking through the barriers to get a look behind Robinson’s gigantic polystyrene construction, looking over the water listening to the rush of chimes from Singh’s Knock on the sky, and glimpsing people moving like dancers behind Spong’s large orange curtains, Cockatoo Island certainly delivered the goods. Lots of other great things too, of course. Maria Fernanda Cardoso's intense investigation into the sexual mechanics of insects was unforgettable (as you might expect with insect sex organs blown up some hundreds of times)and so too was the elegant neon work of Jonathan Jones. A run-down shipping yard on an island in one of the world's most beautiful harbours, got to love it. 

Images: Top Tiffany Singh Knock on the sky listen to the sound. Middle, Sriwhana Spong Costume for a mourner and bottom Peter Robinson Snowball blind time (click on images to enlarge)

Freaky

"The more you see of contemporary art in other parts of the world the more proud of Australian art you become... none of our leading artists produce freak pictures and our landscapes show the sunshine and sweep of the Australian scene." - The Hon Robert Menzies, 1937

Quoted by Mike Parr in MIRROR/ARSE on Cockatoo Island

Image: Mike Parr installation with quote written on wall

Open Mike

If you had any doubts that the White Cube was about worn out as a context for contemporary art, a trip to Cockatoo Island will send them packing. The island is the venue for 34 of the artists exhibiting in the current Sydney Biennale. They have colonized the abandoned buildings that once housed a prison and then shipyards on an island reachable only by ferry and, thanks to sponsorship, a free ferry. The industrial and social tailings on the site are a gift for many of the artists offering emotional punctuation that is missing from so many public art venues. Vernon Ah Kee found it enough simply to point to the racist and sexually violent graffiti in one of the many abandoned toilet blocks. The most memorable installation has been created by Mike Parr. This artist is reasonably well-known in New Zealand but a major figure in Australian contemporary art. Parr offers a partial retrospective of 17 of his more challenging performances in the abandoned buildings of a naval academy. The result is both courageous and generous. From early works where he holds his breath for an excruciatingly length of time to a gut-churning work involving vomiting and dry retching, Parr uses the rooms, corridors and utilities of his location as a kind of organizational ghost with which to organise his ideas. The result is remarkably disturbing. His audio work The Sitting Member has particular resonance to current political antics in New Zealand. It stages the self-serving bad behavior of an Australian parliamentary question time in a lavatory block with grimy walls and floors so saturated with the stench of ancient drains as to make you gag - a word that surely passed through Parr’s mind when he created the piece. It is a savage and telling way to take the piss. Not pleasant art, but unforgettable.