Art Biennale of Sydney

The first moments of this 19th Art Biennale of Sydney, entitled “You Imagine What You Desire”, have been coloured by some of the invited artists’ protests against Transfield Holdings, the event’s main sponsor.

The company has a small stake, via Transfield Services, in the management of the Australian Government’s immigration detention centres on the island-state of Nauru and in Papua New Guinea. Such were the difficulties caused to the event’s organisation that relations with Transfield were broken off and Luca Belgiorno-Nettis (son of the event’s founder and executive director of Transfield) resigned as Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Biennale of Sydney. None of this served to discourage its curator Juliana Engberg who, in the end, lost just Gabriele de Vetri and Charlie Sofo, the only two artists who withdrew from the event.

Engberg, 55 years old and former director of the Australian Centre of Contemporary Art in Melbourne, has come up with a global event along the lines of previous ones. The programme of happenings, encounters and performances embraced by the Biennale gives everyone an opportunity to enjoy at least a small slice, with the larger mouthfuls scattered around five different parts of the city: Cockatoo Island, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Carriageworks and Artspace. All very different from each other, these have exploited their exhibition potential to the maximum and offer an engaging experience even to the less knowledgeable visitor.

Cockatoo Island  is certainly the most characterful setting; strategically positioned in the middle of Sydney Bay, it was a penal colony first and then home to a huge shipyard. The remnants of its past now provide a setting for cultural events and can accommodate hit-and-run visitors in the island’s small but equipped camping site. Because of its unusual nature, Cockatoo Island lends itself, in particular, to video installations- some site specific such as Zilla Leutenegger’s work (Zilla’s House, 2014) which, via sounds and projected shadows, conjures up melancholic spectres engaged in repetitive gestures in the rooms of a decadent colonial house. Another tormenting contrast is created by the delicate movement of Mikala Dweyer’s air sculptures (The Hollows, 2014), caressed by the wind and undulating in a static and rusty old shipyard store.

The other venues of the Biennale of Sydney, more formal and accustomed to the mass public, can accommodate other types of works. Jim Lambie has covered the floor of a room in the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia with coloured vinyl tape (Zobop, 2014), completely distorting its geometric perception. Nine Liquid Incidents (2010-2012) by Roni Horn are ten extremely fragile cast-glass basins, filled to the brim with water. Visitors entering the display space are asked to move carefully, a totally unnecessary recommendation because the encounter with these still masses, in which they are reflected and can reflect, inspires great quiet and respect.

“You Imagine What You Desire” is not really a theme exhibition. The curator’s strategy has favoured a grouping of works not closely related to each other, often opting for a more playful art form that is easily digested and not overly pretentious in conceptual terms – giving families an opportunity to take the plunge into the art world. Most of the 90 artists present have brought videos and short films meaning that, sometimes, after emerging from a relentless sequence of projections, it is almost a surprise to come across works of figurative art. This is true of Anna Tuori and her whimsy portrayals of imaginative landscapes (e.g. Nobody Knew My Rose, 2013). After a giddying and dark passage through the Carriageworks stages, they offer a much-needed pause for reflection that enables visitors to catch their breath.

The prevalence of the video medium steers towards mass entertainment rather than offering a global vision of contemporary art linked by a single train of thought. In this 19th Biennale of Sydney, the absence of a theme means that some works rise above others. The assumption of “You Imagine What You Desire” is, therefore, charged only with the simplest of meanings and each visitor is left to gain their own bearings and find their own trait d’union in the grouping of works and exhibitions.