Venice Biennale : Corderie and Artigliere


Eclectic exhibition at the 58th Venice Biennale showcasing curated contemporary art.

OK get ready the Biennale is vast so I’m going to cover it in four posts as it seems mean to try to look at so much in one hit but if I review each pavilion and artists we’ll be here for ever! I’ml reporting things I did in Venice in the order I did them so there will be a gap between stories. Let’s start in the way I started then with the Corderie on the Arsenale site. This is the main curated section entitled “May You Live in Interesting Times” showcasing 71 contemporary artists. Don’t panic I’m just going to mention my highlights!

I found the show quite cramped at first and much busier in September than I’d imagined but as you enter the taller sections the people seem to thin out or at least there is an illusion of more space. The show started well with lovely photo portraits of Calcutta street people by Soham Gupta cleverly shown with Anthony Hernandez’s photographs showing the beauty in rubbish and dereliction in Rome.

I was moved by Tavares Strachen’s neon installation on the first black astronaut and loved the work shown here by Alexandra Bircken of rubber deflated Gormley like figures which used the height of the space really well. There was a fun installation at the end by Zhanna Kadyrova of a market stall with all the fruit, veg and flowers made of mosaic.

 The best example of paintings were Michael Armitage’s pictures of following an election in Kenya, later in the week I saw his sketches for these in the Central Pavilion at the Giardini and they were exquisite. I strangely rather liked Arthur Jafa’s gig wheels and Christine e/and Margaret Wertheim’s crocheted reefs!

I think my favourite piece was Shilpa Gupta’s installation of a room of poems on spikes by poets who had been jailed or killed for speaking out. From old fashioned microphones over each spike the poems were read in an apparently random sequence. We popped back to this on our way out and managed to get the space to ourselves. A moment of peace in the bustle of the main show.

Closes 24 November 2019

Reviews
Times
Guardian
Telegraph


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Thomas Becket: Murder and Making of a Saint

Image
Stunning exhibition at the British Museum on the life and afterlife of Thomas Becket. I studied Becket both at A Level and at university so I was really looking forward to this show and it did not disappoint. From walking in to see an old friend, the early Limoges casket showing the murder from the Victoria and Albert Museum, I was gripped. The show told the story well using fantastic objects and led you through his life, the murder, the political aftermath, his sainthood and miracles, and how Canterbury became a major pilgrimage site. It is hard to pick out the best objects as so many were wonderful. I loved that they had early copies of some of the five eyewitness accounts of the murder which made you fell you were almost touching the event. I liked the manuscript on his time in exile which was almost like a comic strip. How wonderful to get a 13th century font from Sweden which shows how far and how quickly the news that Henry II had integrated the murder spread. I think my
Read more

Sky Arts Portrait Artist of the Year Exhibition 2019

Image
Delightful exhibition at Clarendon Fine Art showing pictures from the Sky Arts Portrait Artist of the Year TV series. I had loved the series which had set nine artists, both professional and amateur, to paint one of three celebrities. It then had a semi-final and final with them all looking at one sitter and in the final they also took on a commission. I loved the way you watched a picture build and how some were then made or spoiled by one stroke of paint.   Finding these pictures I knew so well in the flesh was therefore fascinating. None of them disappointed. My favourite artist from the final, Tom Mead, works looked just as good in real life if not better as you could see the detail. The show included his impressive self-portrait which he submitted to enter the competition, a wonderful fragmented picture of his reflection in a mirror giving a sense of movement. I loved that it included a large version of him and a miniature. His commission for the final of Jazzie B was
Read more

The Renaissance Nude

Image
Beautiful exhibition at the Royal Academy looking at the nude in Renaissance art. The show was gently themed but mainly let the pictures speak for themselves. It began by looking at the subjects, both religious and secular, which include nude figures then examined techniques and models used in these works, finishing by looking at more personal pictures. This is a period I’ve studied a lot so there were a lot of old friends and it was quite fun predicting what might appear. There were a few surprises too such as the rather surprising drawing of the Ecstatic Christ. I liked the fact the show included lots of different art forms not just paintings including sculpture, etchings, drawings and illuminated manuscripts. There were some fascinating hangs to draw comparisons particularly two sets of pictures by Giovanni Bellini and Hand Memling from almost exactly the same date. These were shown back to back in a display cabinet down the middle of one room. My favourite work was
Read more