CROSS - LEVEL LECTURE 1 - THE NATURE OF THE BIENNIAL

Lynne Fanthome - Cross level lecture 1 - Venice Biennale [nature of the biennial]

   Fanthome explored her own reactions and encounters to work at the biennial fluently and coherently. She traced a narrative that was linked with her background in contextual studies and evidently political history. She introduced her discourse with the history of the Biennial, noting that initially colonial masters of the world were exhibited at the Venice Bienniale. ‘The Biennial celebrates expressions culture.’
It’s interesting to think of the biennial aimed towards a wider art audience, it carries a narrative set out by the chosen curator. Sales are out of the public eye. Where the alternative – the art fair- is very commercially driven, aimed at collectors and buyers.

“THE EXHIBITION: FOCUS ON ART AND ARTISTS: Today, in a world full of conflicts and shocks, art bears witness to the most precious part of what makes us human. Art is the ultimate ground for reflection, individual expression, freedom, and for fundamental questions. Art is the favourite realm for dreams and utopias, a catalyst for human connections that roots us both to nature and the cosmos, that elevates us to a spiritual dimension.” – Christine Macel – Venice Biennale curator 2017

Fanthome noted that Macel has been critically received as being ‘too' humanist. As human beings, especially humans in the field of art, it’s quite impossible to curate a biennial as large as Venice that doesn’t involve a response the essence of our existence. It is worth exploring as that celebration of  a relation that we have with the nature of the universe.

Interesting questions arose in discussions about the scale of the Venice Bienniale, there is something about the scale of the show as a spectacle, about a sensationalism attached to viewing something large. An implication that there’s a sense of awe connected to this display.

Fanthome’s background in contextual studies becomes apparent in how she articulates her personal experience of the exhibition. Thoughts on the Russian Pavilion within the biennial was intriguing. The imperial history of Russia as a country reflected in the scale of the Pavilion and the scale of the work makes that connection to a political narrative that seems to trace itself through other elements of Fanthome’s experience of the Biennial.

There’s an interesting question that Venice Bienniale might be provoking international competition between the various pavilions. Using this visually iconic aesthetic of imperial symbolism as a tool to highlights the current state of world political affairs. It allows us to think about the return of imperialism as a way of control and power. This raises further question as to whether that way of thinking ever really left.


OTHER ARTISTS/WORK REFERENCED
- YEE SOOKYUNG - Walter Benjamin translation essay

- PHYLLIDA BARLOW; folly – monumental, {she defines herself as anti-monumental}. Site responsive, sense of decay rotting city.


- KHADIJA SAYE - the artist who died at Grenfell tower, questions about class, poverty, bad policy, Neglect of certain races.

- HEW LOCKE – Migration, refugee boats. (Diaspora pavilion, critical counterpoint to the nationalism of the biennial, the dispersion or spread of any people from their original homeland.)


- ELLEN GALLAGHER -Osedax 2010, work around a worm from an archaeology, previously a marine biology, mythology, undersea world, alternative world. Visually inventive.

- DAVE LEWIS -Once removed, how we behave in the world double standards. How we might travel through places, make choices, critical trajectory.


- CEVDET EREK-CIN - The Turkish pavilion - Freedom of speech, repression, resistance.

- ROBERTO CUOGHI - Italian pavilion – responsive to Italian religion , art as theatre , mortality, religious history .