The exhibition this year is modelled on Italian-American artist Marino Auriti's 1955 design for a museum, The Encyclopaedic Palace (it was never actually built) that could house all the world's knowledge. The show is conceived as a kind of temporary museum combining artworks, artifacts and found objects from early 20th century to now. Its as though you are led through an encyclopaedia of facts, thoughts and dreams, from profound to insane, progressing from natural to artificial forms; cabinets of curiosities, studies of nature, hallucinations, obsessive adherance to (and weird exceptions from) rules; drawing, painting, photo, film, sculpture, hand and computer generated, real and virtual, through to contemporary digital culture. The show opens with a presentation of Carl Jung's Red Book, his beautifully painted dream manuscripts, leading into the representation of the invisible as a central theme. the show delves into the artist's world, what artists, writers, and scientists make of the plethora of images and visions laid out by nature. The work flows logically through both venues with fascinating variety and intrigue and I think the curator has chosen work that explores themes and ideas that are crucial and deep enough to be important beyond the art world.
Some faves for me are Yuri Ancarani, makes films about people's jobs, this one Da Vinci, was about a laparoscopic surgery robot operator; Sarah Lucas had cast a series of her sand filled knotted stocking figures in bronze ( brass? really shiny); Ron Nagle's ceramics, they look like translucent, frosted glass, beautiful idiosyncratic small sculptures in a huge glass vitrine; Roger Caillois - mind boggling life long collection, its 20yrs old now, of 180 or so kinds of rocks, most sliced into thin sections to display beautiful and strange internal structures - he departed from his contemporary Breton who "valorised the destabilising aesthetic punch of the marvellous" and instead sought both "research and poetry, and proposed investigations that combine the web of dreams with the chain of knowledge". He devised the term 'a diagonal science' and collected the stones because he considered such beauty in the world as 'a cryptic universal syntax'.
I also loved Elliot Porter's photos of birds, he was one of the first to photograph birds in flight in immense detail, in the 70's (?), Channa Horwitz's meticulous geometric coloured pen drawings (70's) done to self- imposed rules were entrancingly sensuous. Formalist work, Wade Guyton had even huger format (about 4000mm square) of his inkjet printer on canvas, which were very cool. I begrudgingly ( an I could have done that but didnt moment) liked Alice Channer's 4 Klein Blue panels, blue adhesive film on Perspex; air bubbles/wrinkles..."imperfections" ...etcetera. Looks good on 3000x 2000 panels in a massive pillared hall. Wonderful reflections of Guyton's work in them.
Of the national pavilions I found Ireland's a very moving account of brutal wars in the Congo, shot in infrared 16mm film with sound track built from actual recordings. The beautifully shot lush crimson and pink landscapes with turquoise rivers playing on 5 huge screens and the crafted soundtrack worked with the photographic documentary to make a deeply affecting, toxic and haunting impression.
China had a series of exquisitely crafted huge oil paintings, (one a full size Chinese version of the Last Judgement) structurally intriging digital drawings and digital animation films showing what I took to be a prophetic / futuristic view of humanity as vulnerable and frail, from young artists' perspective.
Japan had a cool pavilion looking at what happens when artists collaborate, showing 6 looped recordings of collaborative art projects, set up in a student studio-like space; 5 young world class pianists composing and performing on one piano on the spot, 10 award winning hairdressers working on one haircut...and viewer hears all the discussion.
A simple but very strong show by Kosovo, a short poem something like I know you're near me but somehow I can't see you anymore...then you go into a low, dark earth cave, and walk along a pitch dark dampish tunnel, come to a hole broken through one wall about face size, and peer into a pure, light, white room like a hollow underground cave with an earth ceiling (but how could it be so white ?) with tree roots hanging down, amonst which two little yellow/orange birds are flitting about, singing.
Last but not least, Bill Culbert made a very cool looking show in Church of St Maria, really good location, with his light tubes. Used reflection well to make interesting spacial effects but I thought it was a bit light weight. Was lovely to talk to NZ assistant curator Lauren tho and hear the Kiwi accent again.
This is just such a brief overview...it was a really wonderful experience.
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