19th Biennale at Cockatoo Island - 7 June

Back from the US and one weekend left to see the Biennale at Cockatoo Island (I'd seen the MCA and AGNSW offerings before we left).  I'd already seen enough at the MCA and AGNSW to see why the big time critics were underwhelmed.  I was hoping that the island might redeem it somewhat so I grabbed 2 of the junior critics and hopped on the ferry to try and make a dent in the massive visitor shortfall that the 19th Biennale had over previous versions.

Short answer is no.  Longer answer is I have sympathy for how hard it must be to pull together such a big show, but this just seemed like a large group of random works thrown together.  The junior critics liked the google train (Callum Morton's ghost train, pic above) which wasn't half as scary as we worried about.  That said they preferred the ferry trip!  We didn't mind 'The Village' by some Danish artists which looked like oversized gingerbread houses.  But not much else which is a shame as cockatoo island is a great underutilized venue.  The imagination station where the junior critics made some fun projects was cool.  And I quite liked the Green Light by Kate Daw which was a very literal take on the Great Gatsby, pity it was just stuck right amongst the convict quarters where I reckon less than 20% of the visitors to the island would see it.  Why not the ferry wharf?

Points: 3 for the google train; 2 for Eva Koch's massive video installation 'I am the river' and 1 point for the green light.  See you in two years ...

19th Biennale at AGNSW and MCA - 1 May

It's taken a little while to get around to Biennale of Sydney but with the Big Lamington team getting set for a cheeky May trip to the USA I figured I needed to see some of this just to be sure I wasn't missing out.  Taking advantage of late night Wednesday at the AGNSW, and then late night Thursday at the MCA I managed to see enough to understand why McDonald and Frost are so underwhelmed. 

First up for me was the AGNSW.  Firstly, this place was absolutely buzzing for a Thursday night.  Awesome, totally awesome.  Way to go Hamilton*.  I checked out Artexpress first before venturing downstairs for the Biennale floor.  Things started well as I saw Deborah Kelly's big collaged nudes (& also a fully clothed Deborah Kelly wandering showing some friends around).  I like Kelly's works and this series continues with the visual theme from her Magdalene's we saw at GBK back in 2012.  This time around Deborah has interspersed the collaging of photographs of nude people with just some lifesize shots of nude people.  Probably a few too many plain nudes for my liking - the embellishment was where its all at for me**.  My favourite (pictured top), was one that used lots of Deborah's signature hair extensions.  What else?  Yhonnie Scarce's glassworks were very good, and if there wasn't an eagle eyed attendant in the room I would've loved a nice souvenir! Around the corner I thought Michael Cook's photo's were clever but my favourite was Scottish artist Nathan Coley who has taken black and white protest photos and then applied gold leaf to the protest (pictured above).  Visually appealing and probably also politically so for me!  The next night was the MCA.  Sadly I hadn't been warned about the giant cheese beanie in Pippilotti Rist's video.  I hated it.  Jim Lambie's taped up floor was much better but we were coming from a low base.  Upstairs I liked TV Moore's psychedelic photos the best.  And not just because of the great subway tile wall they were hanging on (pictured below).  Okay, maybe a little bit because of the subway tile.  

Points:  I will give the 3 points to Nathan Coley on debut! 2 points to TV Moore for the standout visuals of the Biennale so far.  1 point to Deborah Kelly for the collages.  I will say that the curator has a lot to answer for so far.  I don't get how any of this really goes together.  Cockatoo Island better not suck!  To paraphrase McDonald, so far I have seen a more cohesive thematic at the Easter Show ...

* quoting Spiccoli to give props to the AGNSW here.  Much more buzz than the MCA the night after.
** I think 2 post scripts is nearly a record but this is courtesy of one of the comments.  Apparently Deborah is collaging the nudes throughout the BOS so they will be progressively covered up.  This runs till 9 June so I'll have to come back and see what happens.

18th Biennale at AGNSW - 12 September

The beauty of the AGNSW is you can sneak over here at lunchtime and see quite a lot. Certainly much quicker than the schlep out to Cockatoo Island so it is surprising it has taken me until the last week to see this last part of the Biennale, which is a shame as I reckon the AGNSW's offerings were the best bits.

Things started of well with Jorge Macchi's Blue Planet. This is a small collage (what is it with collages at the moment? They are everywhere!) where he has pasted over all the landmass with more sea. It is out front as the title of this work was meant to inspire all the pieces in the AGNSW section. To me I thought they meant all the art would have water or seas or fluid in it, which a lot did although some works like the burning model house didn't really fit in with that narrative in my head so like most overly curated shows I stopped trying to think about any connecting theme and just went and had a look at the pretty pictures. The absolute standout highlight was in the second room. This was Guido van der Werve's video 'Nummer Acht: Everything is going to be alright' which was projected onto an entire wall (still from video above). This video ran for about a 16 minute loop and I nearly did 2 sittings. It was amazing. Some guy (I presume the artist) walks in front of this giant icebreaker in some remote gulf off Finland. The boat is going slow and he just keeps about the same pace with it, so always just enough out of harms way. It is very quiet except for the muffled noise of the ice breaking. I found it very calming and meditative. The gallery attendant (you should always ask questions of the gallery attendants as most of the time you get these completely honest appraisals of the art that would make the curator faint) also pointed out the dichotomy of the boat walking on ground (being the ice) and the man walking on water (in a sense). He thought it was a bit religious. Maybe. It was hard for anything else to stack up to this. Coming close was Bouchra Khalili's map prints where he does a white line map on blue background connecting illegal immigrant routes around the Mediterranean to look like maps of the constellations. He teams this with some great videos of a hand drawing the routes as narrated to them by an immigrant. Very SBS go back to where you came from. Also good were Juan Manuel Echavarria's wall of lenticular prints (those are the photos that change when you move them, very Easter showbag ruler circa 1985. why there aren't more lenticular prints in art galleries?) and Yuken Teruya's little sculptures made out of paper shopping bags, very delicate indeed.

Points: 3 to Guido van der Werve whose Nummer Acht video was amazing. I could've watched this all day and would love a copy of this, Guido let me know when this is available on DVD.  Region 4 please.  2 points to Jorge Macchi for his great collage, Blue Planet. 1 point will go to Bouchra Khalili for more good map work.

18th Sydney Biennale at Cockatoo Island - 1 August

The 18th Biennale of Sydney (bos18.com on the web but #18bos on twitter - work that one out) runs until 16 September so you've got plenty of time to catch the free ferry over to Cockatoo Island to see this for yourself.  It is a great outing and reasonably family friendly.  Despite this, we only took our 4 year old junior critic with us as it makes it slightly easier to see some art.  So what did the team think?

Firstly we love the free ferry, and are very grateful for whoever keeps sponsoring that.  I think it is the Balnaves Foundation but the signage was tastefully discrete which is rather un-Sydney like.  Onto the art.  First up was the modern day midden of oyster shells and teacups creatively called "untitled" (pictured at top).  I quite liked this work, from an artist who I had never heard of before, Jonathan Jones.  It was a strong start and if no one was looking I would've souvenired something, but then I thought replicating this installation would be pretty easy. In fact come summer when I feel like eating oysters al fresco I just might try this in the backyard.  Next up for us was one of the tunnels which contained "Dune" by dutch artist Daan Roosegaarde.  My daughter loved this interactive work of sound and lights and we had to swing back later in the day to get one more turn at it.  Other highlights were Japanese artist Fujiko Nakaya's "living chasm" which was a fog installation that seemed eerily appropriate for this naval dockyard; Sachiko Abe's trancelike papercutting performance; kiwi Tiffany Singh's "knock on the sky and listen to the sound" wind chime install (which we had seen back at the Dowse last year); and the Canadian pair Pien and Tagaq's "Source" which defies description in a sentence, if you've seen it you'll understand when I say we liked running through the ropes.  Lastly we really enjoyed Li Hongbo's "Ocean of Flowers"which masses together lots of honeycomb paper lantern type thingys.  It is great that he has some unfurled examples and the end and this is where you find out that (spoiler alert) they are actually designed as weapons.  Nice touch.  As always in a show as diverse as the Biennale there was plenty of stuff that didn't float my boat, Alec Finlay's bee hives and Maria Cardoso's insect organs come to mind. It's not that I am anti-insect, I would love an urban hive of my own in Paddington, but I felt Alec could've gone further and had some real bees instead of the recordings.

Points.  3 to Li Hongbo for the paper thingys (above).  We all liked this one.  I will give 2 points to Jonathan Jones whose work I thought really worked well in his allocated space.  The last point is tough as there were quite a lot of pieces that we liked.  I will give 1 point to both Tiffany and Daan as these both worked well on the Island, were interactive, and were adored by my 4 year old.  All in all a good show, definitely not as flashy as last time (I am probably thinking of the exploding cars and the Brook Andrew bouncy castle) but still worth the price of admission (I realise it is nominally free but the nice cafe at the top of the island doesn't miss you!).