Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

SUPERPOSITION: Equilibrium & Engagement, 21st Biennale of Sydney

2018; Penn State University Press; Volume: 3; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.5325/jasiapacipopcult.3.1.0131

2380-7687

H. R. Hyatt-Johnston,

History of Science and Natural History

I attended the media preview of the 21st Biennale of Sydney, SUPERPOSITION: Equilibrium & Engagement, curated by the biennale’s first Asian artistic director, Mami Kataoka, chief curator of the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo, Japan. This biennale explores the ideas of equilibrium and engagement and how we interact with and view the world by drawing on knowledge systems from both the East and the West. Kataoka draws on an old Chinese system of knowledge called “wuxing.” Put simply, this represents both a five-element theory of Chinese philosophy (wood, fire, air, earth, and metal) and a Western worldview as expressed in quantum mechanics. Kataoka uses these ideas to explore two or more objects or events being superpositioned or overlapped. The concept is open-ended and could cover pretty much anything and everything, which is not necessarily a bad thing—indeed, this seems to have been the standard modus operandi for many of the previous biennales, both in Sydney and internationally.Rather disappointingly, there is no published catalog for this biennale, which I think is very shortsighted, as a catalog’s shelf life as a resource document is invaluable. However, I was told that there will be an online version at the end of the exhibition. One of the reasons for this change is the commissioning of new works by the biennale, including works that involve process and duration. According to biennale management, this meant that a catalog could not be produced until the biennale was almost finished. One could speculate that once the biennale is over, an online catalog may not be of much interest except to the artists who were in the exhibitions. Not publishing a hard-copy catalog at the start of the biennale is a poor strategy, and I hope that the next director reverses the decision.There is, however, a small guide—more of a media kit, really—that gives some background to the seventy artists and artist collectives from six continents. The biennale used seven sites, and I am not convinced that it was a great idea to have it strewn across Sydney this way. My last two experiences of the biennale have been disappointing, as I barely had time to visit all the venues because they were so dispersed. Perhaps for me the standout biennale was 1990’s The Readymade Boomerang: Certain Relations in 20th Century Art, directed by the influential German curator René Bloch. It was successful in part because the majority of the works were installed in one location—the Bond Stores, a series of mid-nineteenth-century warehouses on Sydney Harbour. This density allowed the works to reverberate off each other, creating a dialogue, a visual exchange. It was exciting, and the works at the other sites—which were not far away—benefited from that focus. You wanted to see everything.Conversely, the spread of the seven venues means that my visit to this year’s biennale will count as seven visits instead of one, so it will look good when audience numbers are crunched. This is increasingly important with regard to public funding. Cultural events have to be popular and inoffensive if organizations wish to keep their funding and not upset government agencies, which would rather spend money on mega sports stadiums.The installation of the biennale works at the Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW) is certainly the most strategic and intelligent use of the various galleries that I have seen in years. The AGNSW has been a venue partner of the biennale since 1976, three years after its inauguration at the Sydney Opera House (which has returned as a venue this year).It is also no surprise that the director has included projects involving community participation, such as Ciara Phillips’s Workshop (2010 to present) at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia: This working print studio will develop a series of artworks and posters with community groups over the duration of the exhibition. Existing works in the collections of the AGNSW have also been included in the exhibition. Perhaps the most interesting is the Australian modernist painter Roy de Maistre’s Colour Chart (1919), which has been widely used in Australian art schools as a teaching tool, with students re-creating his color experiments.The speech at the official launch was essentially an apology to the Belgiorno-Nettis family and the founder of the biennale, the late Franco Belgiorno-Nettis. In brief, during the 2014 biennale, there were complaints, and various levels of confusion, from some exhibiting artists who withdrew from the biennale about the relationship of the Belgiorno-Nettis family’s foundation, Transfield, with the public company also called Transfield. The public company managed the Australian government’s offshore immigration detention centers on Nauru and Manus Island. These centers are very controversial because they detain asylum seekers indefinitely. The protests resulted in Franco Belgiorno-Nettis’s son Luca stepping down from the board of the biennale. The family’s absence has been felt since. This year, as part of the exhibition strategy, the biennale has on show an archive at the AGNSW. This is given considerable space, and rightly so, as this year is the forty-fifth anniversary of the biennale.Water transport is required to get to Cockatoo Island, as it is located in the middle of Sydney Harbour. It has had a varied history, ranging from a colonial prison to a naval dockyard, and is currently a site for a commercial harbor camping experience. This site is both a blessing and a curse as an art venue. If the spaces are not used effectively, it can be confusing; which is the artwork and which are industrial relics from the site’s previous life? One of my fellow travelers on the ferry to Cockatoo Island commented on the motorbike boots he thought I was wearing. They were, in fact, snow boots and therefore waterproof, as I was prepared for wet and muddy conditions. Every time I have been to Cockatoo Island on a media preview of the biennale it has rained, inevitably rendering the majority of soundworks inaudible and parts of the island inaccessible; you have to return on a more sympathetic day, weather-wise, if you want to give the works their due.A fully resolved example of site specificity and seamlessly installed work is Yukinori Yanagi’s Icarus Container (2018) in the Turbine Hall (Figure 1). It is a labyrinthine tunnel made from former shipping containers, with mirrors in corners and references to nuclear technology, fusion, and burning suns. It works in the space and from the outside looks as if it belongs on the site. Yanagi has two other works in the biennale.The first is the video installation Landscape with an Eye (2018), which is suspended in the Powerhouse Building and again references nuclear energy, with archival footage of atomic bomb testing reminding viewers of the dangers of technology. The second is in the Rectifier Room: Absolute Dud (2016) is a suspended rusted replica of the Little Boy bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, by the Americans. It could be mistaken for a piece of the leftover machinery in the building (Figure 2). It certainly was rusted enough.Koji Ryui’s Jamais Vu (2018), with glass vessels and assorted objects placed and suspended throughout the space, is an example of how an artwork can be dominated by this industrial space. Although it is a subtly beautiful and atmospheric work, I kept being distracted by its surroundings. Perhaps Ryui’s work would have been better served by being placed in a white cube museum setting.Ai Weiwei’s massive black inflatable Law of the Journey (2017), complete with “refugee” figures, has certainly received the most media coverage. However, I was underwhelmed and found its inclusion in an art venue that is “safe” and preaching to an already sympathetic audience questionable. It is only the scale that elevates it from being a cliché. I think it would have been better placed floating aimlessly in the Mediterranean Sea, with all of us waiting to see how long it takes before someone notices it and then watching to see what they do with it. His Crystal Ball (2017)—at another biennale venue, Artspace—is more provocative but is installed in a gallery hung with too many other works. Again, the cost of producing a crystal ball of such quality and size makes me ponder the real purpose of this work.At another postindustrial site, Carriageworks, Chen Shaoxing’s The Views (2016) looked beautiful and intriguing with its four-channel video installation, created using the artist’s particular Chinese ink painting animation style. It is hauntingly and deceivingly simple, with black-and-white images of daily life, including the minutiae of people pushing bicycles and birds in trees. The scenes were made even more poignant when I realized that these were views from Shaoxing’s hospital bed—he was terminally ill during their creation. This was one of his last works (Figure 3).I really wanted to like this biennale. It finally has a curator from Asia, which is where Australia is geographically, instead of one from England, Europe, or the United States. The effect of this is evident in the selection of artists. Although biennale management claims that its public funding remains the same as for previous biennales (I suspect that private benefaction has been significantly reduced), the whole exhibition has an impoverished feel. I just wish that Kataoka had had a larger budget and that there had been a published catalog. I enjoy reading the critical contextualizations of works, even though I do not always agree with them.Arts and arts organizations—and even art schools—all throughout Australia are experiencing severe cuts. Indeed, cultural organizations of all sizes are increasingly under pressure to pursue private sources of funding. These sources are an ever-shrinking pool, with the same people being approached over and over again. Seeking this funding also takes valuable time, support, and resources away from artists, as institutions allocate more money to this area to generate enough funds to keep the doors open.Biennale management should seriously consider focusing on just one site for works that require the white cube of the museum and should bite the bullet with Cockatoo Island, using it for the bulk of the exhibition or not using it at all. It does not work with a lot of unused sites across the island. The smaller works get lost, and visitors cannot know when an empty space is meant to be just that.A final thought: Surely Australia is culturally mature enough for the next director to be an Aboriginal Australian. This is well overdue. Maybe the new director will include a couple of token “white fellows” in the biennale for a change.H. R. Hyatt-Johnston is a visual artist; one half of the collaborative duo The Twilight Girls; and a writer, list maker, collector, and occasional curator. Hyatt-Johnston’s diverse employment background in hospitals, environmental organizations, and contemporary art spaces has resulted in a variety of roles, including general manager, registered nurse, midwife, and preparator. She has an avid interest in lighthouses, national parks, wildlife, and scrambling up mountains (but she is not so keen on going down). She believes that there is no such thing as bad weather, as it can never be too cold, and that you can’t spend enough time watching films and reading books on science fiction, Scandi noir, mountaineering, or anything else for that matter. Her preferred mode of transport when not traveling by foot or swimming is by car riding shotgun and telling the driver where to go, closely followed by traveling by sea and train.