ArtAsiaPacific: Light Inspite Of The Storm

Eglë Budvytytë’s Choreography for the Running Male (2012) rewards visitors who take the trouble to seek out the open-air performances with 16 running—at times crawling—men moving in unison through the streets and parks of Sydney. It is a humorous comment on how we unconsciously adopt stereotypical behaviors when brought together as a group.

Meriç Algün Ringborg’s site-specific installation The Library of Unborrowed Books: Section 111, SMSA Library, Sydney (2014) certainly meets Engberg’s curatorial requirements that the artwork be engaging and fun. Visitors are invited to take out real books that have never been borrowed from Sydney’s Mechanics’ School of Art’s Library. The contract authorizing the lending of books until June, however, somehow negates the original premise of the work.

Randi and Katrine’s The Village (2014) on Cockatoo Island is a fairytale village that offers fun for children while simultaneously delivering a serious message to adults: those who do not fit social norms will be excluded. It is a fitting sentiment amid the Transfield debacle and the current debate regarding Australia’s treatment of asylum seekers.

Jim Lambie’s modus operandi involves covering entire floors with wildly colored vinyl tape, achieving visual sensations and heightened levels of sensory awareness. An altogether agreeable sense of synesthesia results.

Callum Morton has turned the Dog-Leg Tunnel, built through the cliffs of Cockatoo Island by convicts over 100 years ago, into a ghost-train ride with clouds of steam, various startling noises, flashing lights and other miscellaneous surprises. This is a one-way journey. Visitors who ride the train through the Google portal seem never to return, having been dumped on the other side of the island. The Other Side (2014) continues Morton’s ongoing interest in the incongruities between sensation and perception.

Possibly the standout installation of the Biennale is Douglas Gordon’s Phantom (2011), in which the haunting voice of American singer Rufus Wainwright mesmerizes under the watchful gaze of a kohl-encrusted eye. The eye slowly opens and closes, approximating varying degrees of sadness and redemption. But to what extent such sentiments are felt depends on the mood of the viewer.

Michael Cook is one of the few indigenous Australians in the Biennale, which is a serious omission. This collection of photographs, which features the journey of a single male protagonist, symbolizes indigenous Australians’ struggle to reclaim familiar and significant sites. The building seen here is the High Court of Australia in Canberra, the nation’s capital city.

Ever since Cai Guo-Qiang metaphorically exploded his cars in the vast space of Cockatoo Island’s Turbine Hall at the 2010 edition of the Biennale, the cavernous hall has become a confronting challenge for artists. With her work I Am The River (2012), Eva Koch has risen to the occasion and tamed the space with a slow-motion video installation of a primordial cascade, which is accompanied by the sound of roaring water.

All photos by Michael Young for ArtAsiaPacific.

Controversy has dogged the lead up to the opening of the 19th Biennale of Sydney (BoS), “You Imagine What You Desire,” with nine artists pulling out pre-launch and over half of the exhibitors signing an open letter of protest to the Biennale’s board over links between the event’s major sponsor Transfield and off-shore detention centers for asylum seekers.

What started as a ripple of disquiet among a small group quickly developed into a tumultuous protest leading to the resignation of Transfield director Luca Belgiorno-Nettis as chair of the BoS. A question mark still hovers over the nature of future arts funding in Australia. On opening day, a handful of artists still chose to remain outside of the event.

At the media preview, interim BoS chair Andrew Cameron,and its CEO Marah Braye avoided mention of either Transfield or Belgiorno-Nettis in their speeches. The Biennale’s curator, Juliana Engberg, however, acknowledged “Luca and family.”

This year’s Biennale is a smorgasbord, as biennales tend to be, spread across Cockatoo Island, the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Carriageworks and Artspace. Its theme and artistic premise is fun and engaging and it is unashamedly egalitarian.

Fun for adults and children alike can be found in Callum Morton’s The Other Side (2014), where the artist has transformed the Dog-Leg Tunnel on Cockatoo Island into a black-hole using smoke, sound and wind, as well as Yingmei Duan’s performance of Happy Yingmei (2014) where the artist lurks in a darkened room more reminiscent of a pile of dead twigs than the mystical forest it is meant to be. Duan’s commitment to being onsite for the show’s duration makes this an act of endurance.

One of the real delights is the performance piece by Eglë Budvytytë Choreography for the Running Male (2012), in which 16 men run in unison through the city streets.

Engberg has produced a Biennale given to wild flights of fantasy, suggestive of her own robust personality. It is also interesting to note that, of the 92 artists participating, 36 are from Scandinavian and northern European countries—a reflection of the curator’s Nordic heritage.

The 19th Biennale of Sydney, “You Imagine What You Desire,” runs through June 9, 2014.

Michael Young is contributing editor at ArtAsiaPacific.

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Light In Spite of the Storm: The 19th Biennale of Sydney