Art Overload: Venice Biennale 2019

What do clairvoyant spiders, anvils, underground tunnels, washing-machines, a cow on an automated track to nowhere, looming environmental concerns, creation-myths, vanity, surveillance and issues of censorship, gender, race and politics all have in common? Two years have passed and it is time for the Venice Biennale 2019!

Writing about the Biennale as a whole is a feat worth applauding! Now in its 58^th cycle and featuring far over fifty countries and hundreds of artists/works in all mediums in what is a huge, complex art Olympics that is, for all its delights also quite exhausting! The central pavilion’s theme, ‘May you live in interesting times’ is a fittingly ambiguous, yet pleasingly all-encompassing, title for what is essentially the world barometer for art, what’s hot and what’s not. Who, which themes and ideas will be appearing in exhibitions near you! Save your applause, however, because instead of trying to cover it all, I have focused instead on the things that were most memorable or had resonance with me. In a vein-attempt to make some sense of it all (in no particular order) is my personal ‘unconventional’ top twenty-one of the ‘must see’ experiences this Biennale.

Arsenale

Tarek Atoui

Ceramic sculptures used to create unusual sound-based installations. Intriguing to watch how these pieces moved as it was to listen.

Image sourced from: https://www.labiennale.org/en/art/2019/partecipants/tarek-atoui

Barca Nostra/Chris Büchel

One of the more controversial exhibits in this year’s Biennale, but also one of the most poignant. Barca Nostra is a shipwreck from a disaster in the Sicilian channel in which between 700-1,100 people seeking refuge from Libya were have believed to have perished. The ship appears ghostly but almost ‘at home’ in its maritime setting of the Arsenale (where many boats are docked) where it could be easily dismissed by those unaware of its history. It is debatable on whether displaying this boat, associated with such tragedy is tasteful or appropriate but I think its greater legacy in being a reminder and political tool ‘for change’ to those whose lives were senselessly lost is something which should not be ignored. In bringing this to the Biennale the reality of what happened becomes more significant in current memory than reading about it in a piece of journalism.  

Jesse Darling

Unable to use their right arm due to a neurological disease, Darling creates assemblages from ‘small, low-cost, everyday materials’. In ‘March of the Valedictorians’ red school chairs on impossibly long spindly legs teeter precariously whilst supporting one-another as a whole group. Humorous and playful.

 Zhanna Kadyrova

Russian Constructivism meets Pop Art in Kadyrova’s ‘Market’ in which fruits, cheeses and meats are ‘for sale’ re-created from tiles and concrete. The idea of ‘art as commodity’ is questioned as each item in this market is sold under the currency of weight. My parents are and have both worked in the fruit-trade all my life and so this piece has a personal association that appealed to me.

Tavares Strachan

‘Robert’ is a neon sculpture representing the skeleton of first African-American astronaut, Robert Henry Lawrence Jr who died in a training accident in 1967. This piece is part of a body of work Strachan has made around the story of Lawrence’s death in working in conjunction with SpaceX. The work raises awareness of Lawrence’s achievements as the first African astronaut as well as the racism encountered around the incident of his death and why, figures such as Lawrence should not have remained invisible in history for this long. Given the 50 years milestone since the moon landings, this collection of work gains added timeliness that leaves a lasting impression.

Christian Marclay

I have been a fan of Marclay’s work since I first saw the film, ‘The Clock’ in Plymouth’s ‘British Art Show 7’ 2011, in which 24 hours worth of film clips create a real-time clock. If you love movies and like collage then you will appreciate how entertaining it is trying to work out where each clip has come from or guess what the next one will be. For the Biennale Marclay presents, ’48 War Movies’ which are screened (with sound) simultaneously as each film is layered on top of the other to create 48 borders. The sound is perhaps more disorientating than the image, as the cacophony of noise is unsettling and chaotic as war itself. 

Image sourced from: https://news.artnet.com/exhibitions/pics-from-the-biennial-part-1-1540588

 John Akomfrah [Ghana]

In a three-channel film titled, ‘Four Nocturnes’, British director, Akomfrah uses natural history and  archived footage edited alongside shots of characters contemplating, motionlessly. Unmistakably recognisable in its editing and beauty of photography present the concept that humanities destruction of the natural world is ultimately also a destruction of ourselves. 

Image sourced from: https://www.lissongallery.com/news/john-akomfrah-presents-four-nocturnes-video-installation-at-venice-biennale

Marco Godinho [Grand Duchy of Luxembourg]

Hundreds of blank notebooks ‘sculpted’ by the artist’s hands line a slope in the Grand Duchy of Luxemborg pavilion. Each one unique as its page’s have been manipulated and made supple by the sea water in the Mediterranean. ‘Written by Water’ is an exploration of ‘human learning and remembering as a continuous process of writing, erasing and overwriting. As with other works in the Biennale (referred to here) I am personally drawn to work which appears to be simple, but has been created from someone noticing something and then exploring it on a grand scale (in this case, almost obsessively). I like the idea that a book soaked in the sea could become a piece of sculpture as much as there is something mesmerizingly meditative about watching these books being created in the accompanying film to this installation.

Zahrah Al Ghamdi [Saudi Arabia]

50,000 handmade leather ‘pods, line lit fabric walls in Al Ghamdi’s immersive and interactive installation ‘After Illusion’. Viewers are invited to touch and explore the work with their hands to seek out interactive sounds triggered by placing a hand inside a correct pod. Leather being used as the primary material relates to craft within Saudi Arabia and title from an Arabic poem about ‘the struggle to remember home after being away for 20 years’. The other worldliness of this installation does go some-way to achieving just that.

Gr Iranna [India]

One of the several artists exhibiting in the Indian pavilion for this Biennale, Irana’s piece titled, ‘Naavu (We together)’ consists of worn and altered padukas (wooden footwear) which line the walls. Each one uniquely altered or adorned with objects (possibly from their previous owners) and symbols that are significant of various spiritual connotations within Indian history or culture. I have always liked objects, ephemera that tell a story of its owner and I like the possible connotations and narratives that seeing these shoes conjure.

Mark Justiniani [Philippines]

The piece, ‘Island weather’ by Justiniani is a work that must be experienced to be best understood. Viewers can step on top of a series of clear-topped, island-shaped platforms containing objects housed by mirrors. The effect is one of looking down to what appears to be infinity. Half a ladder, a stack of papers are in fact the reality but when placed in these mirrored containers appear, to the viewer standing above, to continue downwards forever into a black endless nothingness below. It is genuinely quite disconcerting but impressive at the same time.

Image sourced from: https://www.theartnewspaper.com/review/venice-biennale-2019-the-must-see-pavilions-in-the-arsenale

Gardini

Tomás Saraceno

Arachnomancy is performed in Saraceno’s ‘Web pavilion 7’ inspired by the Mabila Nggam divination practiced in Western and Central Africa in which spider’s actions and webs are interpreted. The pavilion features spider webs, tarot cards and divination readings. Aiming to use interactive installations and ‘sustainable ways of inhabiting the environment’ to turn audiences awareness to other species and systems. Again the joy for this work, for me personally, is an idea I have already expressed, that this work is great because spider’s webs are fascinating, the artist isn’t trying to compete with that idea, merely notice and present it to a wider audience through the context of art.

Image sourced from: https://universes.art/en/venice-biennale/2019/fast-tour-2/tomas-saraceno  

Sun Yuan and Peng Yu

For anyone who routinely feels compelled to wipe all the condensation off of steamed-up bathroom mirrors, the plight of Yuan and Yu’s robotic arm that ends with a shovel as it attempts to scrape back an endlessly encroaching red liquid to within a circular area will be highly relatable. Mesmerising in its almost human/animal-like size the giant arm might be one of the most videoed works in this year’s Biennale but it is also one of the most compellingly watchable.

Larissa Sansour [Denmark]

Denmark pavilion’s dystopian sci-fi film offering titled, ‘Heirloom’ ruminates on life, memory and identity after ecological disaster. Shot in black and white its otherworldliness and themes such as nostalgia, explored reminded me of Tarkovsky’s, ‘Stalker’.

Image sourced from: https://www.idoart.dk/kalender/larissa-sansour-heirloom-danish-pavilion-la-biennale-di-venezia-2019

Motoyuki Shitamichi [Japan]

An architect, an artist and a composer are the creative disciplines behind the Japanese pavilion installation that tells the story of ‘Cosmo-Eggs’. Essentially the work consists of photos of boulders, sound and an inflatable egg-yolk yellow central seating area connected by a series of sound cables, like umbilical cords. I struggled to see the point of all of this until I had read the allegory on the wall (see below) which helped contextualise the work and was a refreshing insight as an alternative creation-myth for the Japanese islands. For me personally it reaffirmed that the Biennale doesn’t have to always be a looking-forward or comment on current life but can be an exploration of traditions and storytelling, re-imagined for new audiences.   

“A long time ago, sun and moon descended to earth and laid a single egg. A snake came and swallowed the egg, and so sun and moon visited earth once more to leave behind three eggs that they hid: one inside earth, one inside stone, and one inside bamboo. The eggs soon hatched, and born were the ancestors of three islands. Once grown up, they each built a small boat and travelled to different islands: one in the East, one in the West, and one in the North. The tribes of these islands visited each other by boat, and despite occasional fights, they overcame pestilence and poor harvests to live in peace for a long time. Each island passed down its own language, its own music, its own traditions, its own festivals. They each possessed the power to speak with the animals: the earth tribe spoke with the worms and the insects, the stone tribe with the snakes, and the bamboo tribe with the birds.”

Image sourced from: http://myartguides.com/national-participations/japan-2019/

Roman Stańczak [Poland]

An inside-out luxury aircraft is the central piece to this year’s Polish pavilion. In reversing the aircraft the artist is attempting to criticise the ‘rich elite’ and inequalities of capitalism. Somewhat ironically, if this piece, as ‘art’ (and sold as art) then feeds back into the rich elite it is trying to challenge. All of that aside it is a fascinating piece to explore visually and out of curiosity.  

Venice Pavilion

A mysterious but compelling queue of people beckons closer inspection of the Venice pavilion, revealing an embodied experience experienced by no more than 8 people at a time. Stepping from the heat of the Gardini into what is a life-size, inflatable tube with water underneath is a remarkably welcome and cooling experience (not to mention slightly hap-hazard) as it is basically like walking on the world’s longest and biggest waterbed (or imagining of intestinal tract)! It is an unashamed spectacle in which the viewer becomes participant in its existence as a piece of art.

Aya Ben Ron [Israel]

Historically speaking, the Israeli pavilion has always been one of my favourites out of the four Biennale’s I have attended. This year’s offering may not be up there with my favourites but it definitely made me think. ‘Field Hospital’ is an interactive art ‘institution’ established by the artist, Aya Ben Ron, with the aims to ‘provide a space in which silenced voices can be heard and social injustices can be seen’. Looking and acting like a ‘real’ hospital the pavilion is transformed into a waiting room where viewers wait to be called to experience ‘care-kits’ upstairs which include special video/seating chairs showing recorded testimonies of social injustices and Safe-Unit areas in which participants can scream in sound proof booths.

Offsite

Dysfunctional –Ca’d’Oro

If you see one offsite exhibition during this year’s Biennale, Dysfunctional should be it. Featuring 21 artists from the Carpenter’s Workshop Gallery who have made work in response to the architecture of the Ca’d’Oro and its collection of Renaissance art. It is refreshing in its lack of pretentiousness as it seems to celebrate really well-made, visual but still thought-provoking pieces as a much welcomed break from the depth of intensity needed in digesting many of the other Biennale shows. Shown here: Maarten Bass 'Real Time XL' (2019) a recorded twelve hour performance involving painting, removing and repainting hands on a clock-face. And the Vernoeven Twins 'Moments of Happiness' (2019) glass giant bubbles. 

Renata Morales, Invasor –Ca’Ressonico Gallery

Self-portraits of the artist and 70 gloss painted-used tyres make the components of Mexican artist, Morales’ exhibition at the Ca Ressonico Gallery. This assembled collage of stuff which includes dinosaurs (why not) aims to, “challenge our perceptions of texture, touch, beauty, solace and violence”. I struggled to engage with how all of these elements came together, personally,  but from a purely aesthetic and debatably shallow perspective enjoyed seeing so many coloured tyres as an installation.

Eila Yenlysarja –Various locations

The Biennale’s best kept secret (one you won’t find in any of the guidebooks)! Yenlysarja’s weathered, textured surfaces and palimpsests materialise themselves around the city in various locations. A celebration of beauty and purity in surface and form. I could look at these all day long!

The Biennale can be seen across locations in Venice until November 24^th

https://www.labiennale.org/en/art/2019

 
Previous Posts about the Venice Biennale can be read here:
2017 - http://spannerintheworkz.blogspot.com/2017/07/viva-venezia.html
2015 - http://spannerintheworkz.blogspot.com/2015/06/i-always-believed-in-futures.html
2013 - http://spannerintheworkz.blogspot.com/2013/11/venice-biennale-2013.html

Images (except where specified) and text copyright of Natalie Parsley ©

The Lazy Reality

A couple of weeks ago in a lazy evening of television channel hopping boredom I stumbled across a documentary about the life and work of Japanese born artist, Yayoi Kusama (1929) on BBC4. Kusama, now eighty-five years old continues make work at a prolific rate, obsessively exploring her use of brightly coloured polka dots that swamp, multiply and create the surfaces of her paintings, installations and sculptures . After the documentary had finished the BBC also showed a video piece Kusama made in 1967 titled ‘Kusama’s Self Obliteration’. The film, running at approx twenty-five minutes is a psychedelic, (in every sense of the word) colourful, trippy, fragmented and experimental documentation of the artist as she paints polka dots on animals, people and plants in uniquely created/painted/lit environments also made by Kusama. Perhaps more unusual than the film itself however, was that I watched it in its entirety and from my living room. Yes, it is a sad, sad, lazy but true reality that I am useless at watching video art as I don’t often have the patience to watch it in a gallery even despite having a love of film (in the cinema sense). So I was interested how I felt more willing, more open to watching Kusama’s film because of the lazy convenience and relaxed familiarity of watching it on TV. Does that really matter? Is it better to see a film at all than only see it only in a particular context? And so this post isn’t really about Kusama or that film in particular, but is more of a confession, discussion and question of how and where we view video art in general.

 

Can video art be viewed outside the context of the gallery and in doing so does it cease to be art?

 

It’s an uncomfortable confession because there is a kind of snobbery, a ‘dumbing down’ by watching ‘art’ on TV as to a gallery as though some of the quality, the importance and authority of the gallery is lost when the work is shown on TV, which unsettles the fuzzy familiar experience of mainstream entertainment or information programmes. I’ll admit this self consciousness sounds slightly ridiculous but does raise some interesting debates on how context definitely alters not only how we view the work, in terms of time spent (because at home I’m watching Kusama’s film in the comfort of my sofa in my pyjamas) but also alters what the piece means by having it presented on the censored public serving corporation that is the BBC.  On one side the eager to please, usually politically correctness of public service broadcasting on the other the anti-establishment, radical and challenging tone of modern art and modern art galleries. The two in many ways don’t, in a natural or all too obvious way, fit together.  The censorship and risk-taking of galleries being different to that of the more tightly regulated world of British broadcasting...or so I assume? So it’s very interesting that maybe now the piece is 51 years old that the BBC thinks the public are now art conscious enough to be ready for the experience of a young Japanese woman painting polka dots on naked men and horses (and rightly so albeit better late than never). Maybe more contemporary video art should be shown on television? Would it be allowed? Had the Kusama video not been shown in context to the documentary that proceeded it would it have ever been shown at all? Equally, I wonder what would happen if the BBC decided to show a still of a Hans Holbein, Constable or Van Eyck painting for twenty-five minutes?

 

 I had the opportunity to see this same Kusama film in a gallery when I went to the Yayoi Kusama exhibition at the Tate Modern two years ago and spent ages looking at the subtle layering of her infinity net paintings and immersive polka dot filled installations but gave little attention to this same film in the context of the gallery installation because (as often) I felt too impatient and excited by seeing all the other work on offer. There are many unspoken anxieties involved in the process of viewing art and one of them is the assumption that having studied art I must automatically be able to appreciate and understand it all. In truth, despite in having what I consider a good knowledge of how to ‘read art’ there’s still much about it that puzzles me which is why I continue to see so much of it (that’s also part of its appeal). However video and film art has remained awkward for me, despite over the years trying to sit through as much of it as my fidgety, nervous excitableness will let me and I don’t think I’m alone in feeling this way. Many friends and peers I’ve spoken to have mentioned how the amount of time a film demands its participant to commit is often frustrating compared to that of viewing a painting.  You can’t walk into a painting half way, it’s already a frozen moment in time whereas in film you can walk in towards the end, the middle or beginning and  have to be much more active and thinking in order to make sense of what is going on. This power struggle of attention between art and viewer is more obvious and directly questioning in video art, “are you going to stay and watch more? Will it all make sense in the end?”

Christian Marclay 'The Clock' (2010)

 

Ironically I am someone that absolutely loves cinema and see some shots from films and works by particular directors as being art or amongst the greatest works of art ever created.  Whether they need to be viewed in a gallery, cinema or on the television to be seen this way is perhaps subjective; I just think you have more time and the expectation is different if you plan to see a film instead of accidently seeing it half-way through. Christian Marclay explored the distinction between art and cinema in his 24 hour extravaganza, ‘The Clock’ which used images of clocks or references to the time from thousands of different films to create a 24 hour montage of clips that followed the real time you were watching it (still with me?). This was art as a celebration of cinema, but also showing that the limitation of cinema is that it isn’t set in ‘real time’, its escapism. As an art piece it combined those two things whilst always reminding you how long you’d been watching for and that your watching was happening in the present moment.

 

 Video art gives a creative freedom to film makers that can potentially lead the shift from art world to movie world as is the case with Turner Prize, now Oscar winning artist turned director, Steve McQueen who has been quoted as saying, . “I don’t see much contrast from the art world to the movie world.”Similarly photographer turned Hollywood director, Sam Taylor Wood will be presenting her second directorial outing with ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ showing February next year. Or some artists like Matthew Barney remain more creative but equally (if not more so) ambitious away from the consumer-driven industry of cinema with work such as 'The Cremaster Cycle' which is a series of five feature length films but borders on being an immersive sculptural, painterly, installation, musical, performance, film all in one. 

 

The video art I have responded to best is when it acts as something other than film, i.e installed in a space/environment, projected in a room or on a screen like cinema, installation or painting (examples to follow). Every scene should grab you, capture the viewer's interest so that it hold them to stay and watch it all. John Akomfrah’s  film ‘The Unfinished Conversation’ (pictured below) being one such example of a film shown as part of the 2012 Liverpool Biennial that was a three-way split screen which filled the room and played three different narratives simultaneously whilst relating to one another to tell the story of cultural theorist and writer Stuart Hall. On a basic level it worked as a documentary, but visually some of the scenes, photography and clever use of the split screen enhanced the emotion and impact of the experience to being more than that of 'just a documentary'.

John Akomfrah 'The Unfinished Conversation'  (2012)

 

Bill Viola 'Martyrs' (2014)

Elizabeth Price is a video artist that combines text, stock footage and soundtracks to create punchy, mesmerising films. I first saw 'User group disco' (pictured below) as part of the British Art Show at Plymouth and it marked the first piece of video art I watched in a gallery from start to finish. At university in Plymouth, I also proceeded to visit it several more times. This film was brash and hard-hitting in its use of tabloid style text on top of close-up imagery of spinning and whirling kitchen utensils and ornaments; it sort of mesmerized and sucked you in. Although at the same time it was enigmatic enough to make you curious to stay and watch it until the end. It has to be said some of the simplest video art has often been the best, Kader Attia 'Oil and Sugar #2', 2007 (shown Liverpool Biennial 2012) delivers exactly what its title promises as oil is poured onto a stacked cube of sugar cubes. You can already picture what's going to happen, the inevitable collapse of the sugar cubes as they dissolve into the oil, but it is nonetheless watchable because you'd never see how these two materials react together elsewhere.

Bill Viola’s ‘Martyrs’ (pictured above) shown at St Paul's in London is not only an example of a video piece of art that wouldn't work as well outside its context but also how film can act, in this instance more like a painting, an altar piece with a straight forward narrative of action and consequence, full of elemental symbolism, lighting and framing that borrows itself directly from the language of early Renaissance painting. Viola' s work has been criticised for being 'too obvious' and too readable in its meaning through iconic imagery, but I personally think that their accessibility is part of their appeal and their use of symbolic imagery is archetypal. And the more you look you find there's loads of cross-referencing between painting and film, Peter Greenaway being another example. To look at this another way it is a shame that, generally speaking, we don’t take the same amount of time/attention to viewing painting/sculpture as we do viewing film. Although tellingly this probably reflects the time we are in.

Elizabeth Price 'User Group Disco' (2009). Watch the video here: http://vimeo.com/36307724

 

What it really comes down to is a question of audience, video art in galleries allows for creative freedom and experimentation for artists, it can present new ways of seeing the world and developing/testing new technology. Like all art it can either alienate audiences if you aren’t expecting to spend time watching it or it can open-up and make art more accessible to those unfamiliar or uninterested in painting, printmaking or sculpture. Maybe it is about empowering the audience so they can decide if and when they watch a piece of video art, which is pretty much and has gone without saying, what the internet does already, but then what role does the gallery play? Like painting or sculpture there are plenty of good and bad examples (some of the good hopefully mentioned here) of film art. Despite getting slightly more patient and slightly more knowledgeable over the years I think I will continue to endeavour with my inhibitions around video art; never knowing how long or not to spend viewing the work, whether I should sit on the uncomfortable wooden bench, the floor, or stand in the doorway or back of the room, whether I should walk around and come back to it later, whether I should wait 5 minutes or two; things I never feel as self conscious about when viewing other art, but then they are also reasons why I will continue to enjoy confronting and being challenged and maybe not feeling as guilty for watching it on the television as much as seeing it in the gallery.