Cathy's Art Diary

Vibrant  exhibition and national pavilions at the Venice Biennale starting with the Arsenale site. Generally I found the Biennale much more cheerful and life affirming than some previous occasions.   Although it still tackled difficult subjects it tended to present them as joy following hard times and the power of people acting together. As ever I   started with the curated section and shout outs go to Kiluanji Kia Hendra's views through railings shown with the railings themselves, Omar Mismar's mosaics, a wonderful indigo structure and Bochra Khalili's video installation of maps of migrant journeys. One criticism however would be that there seemed to be   a lot of art which wasn't contemporary and I expect it to be a contemporary art showcase. I think the aim was to fill gaps from the past along the theme of the show of "Foreigners Everywhere". The second moan is the length of the labels and the very small font used. A lot of space was taken up with tel...

Wonderful variety of national pavilions at the 58th Venice Biennale on the Arsenale site. My second review is looking at the national pavilions on the Arsenal site. These tend to be smaller than the main pavilions at the Giardini but contained some fascinating and beautiful work. I liked the India pavilion which focused on artists who had worked with or been inspired by Gandhi to mark 150 years since his birth. I loved a wall of painted sandals and modern murgal style paintings. I loved the Ghana pavilion whose interior was designed by the architect Sir David Adjaye in the colours of the land and featured lovely paintings by Lynette Yiadom-Boakye and El Anatsui’s hangings made of bottle tops. Also the Luxemberg offering, shown here, of note books soaked in sea water and sculpture into different shapes. I also have to mention the Malta Pavilion for Trevor Borg’s re-imagination of an archaeological site on suspended black platforms, stark white objects on   a dark ba...

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 ...