Venice and Moving

I got back from Venice over a week ago now, and it was a highly enjoyable experience. Listing all the work that I saw would take ages, and to be honest I probably wouldn't be able to remember it all. For now I'm going to talk about the different spaces I went into and the highlights from each day.

On the day that I arrived I went to a number of exhibitions, some of them were simply normal galleries whilst others were pavilions that were part of the biennale. One of my favourites was the Taiwanese Pavilion featuring the artist Wu Tien-chang with work titled "Never Say Goodbye". The works featured light and sound performances where (in the majority of them) a genderless person would walk across the screen of a T.V on a never-ending treadmill, whilst the backgrounds would continually changed. When the figure eventually walks off the screen they wave goodbye to you, the audience. Lots of ideas about life and death within the era of post-war westernization was being looked at within the work. It was a wholly unique and interesting experience to observe and has stayed with me now for nearly two weeks. I got to see many other things that day, but nothing got that close to this piece.

The second day was consumed by the Giardini, which is a space that contains many of the different pavilions. You could definitely spend a few days just soaking up the art in that place. After googling it just now there are about 30 pavilions in there, so I'm not over exaggerating. Some of my favourites were the Canadian Pavilion (BGL - Art collective), where half of the space was turned into a shop that slowly became blurry as you moved through it. Making me question whether I should get my eyes tested. Another was the Swiss building (Pamela Rosenkranz) that was filled with a monochrome liquid that matches the standard Northern European skin tone. It also smelled like a newborn baby. All of these aspects of the work ask the question of what it means to be human. I also enjoyed the German Pavilion, which had so many different aspects to it, one of which saw artists in residence on the roof of the building, every few hours showing themselves to throw a boomerang. I like the idea of doing something that you may or may not see, but is there because you say it's there. So even if you don't see it you presume that someone else has. So you could create an entirely fictitious project, but only if you have the work and writing to back it up. Another space that was truly spectacular was the Austrian pavilion. When you first walk in it appeared to have no art in it, but in fact the whole building had been changed, which was in itself the art. The artist Heimo Zobernig took away all of the arches and visual details of the space and created an incredibly minimal pavilion, that allows you to sit and contemplate the area for a minute or two. This idea of reducing something but adding a new element (the dark void that consumed the inside) to the mix is interesting.

On the day after that I went to the Arsenale, which is another area that's filled with lots of art from a number of different artists/countries. I really liked a few of the films within this, which was surprisingly, as I'm usually not a huge fan of them. "Ashes" by Steve McQueen is a two part film, where on one end you're watching footage of a young man being buried in a coffin and on the other you're seeing the same man, alive and well on a boat, enjoying life. It was a terribly distressing film that was incredibly moving. Another piece of work that I liked was part film and part sculpture (Games Whose Rules I Ignore). The artist (Boris Achour) created six different games to be played by two people. In the film you are shown different people playing these games, allowing you to take a glimpse into their relationship as well as the seemingly made up rules that the games employ. Another interesting piece (Latent Images, Diary of a Photographer) by Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige involved a set of books on a wall. The work itself is a performance, which is incredibly complicated and awesome. I would recommend looking it up as I can't really do it any justice by attempting to describe what was going on.

The next day was the last day, which was mainly made up of visiting the Palazzo Grassi which had a great exhibition that was curated by the artist Danh Vō. In each room the different pieces of work from different artists had a dialogue with one another. For example, one room was solely dedicated to artworks that featured sex in some way. This is a very obvious link, but in other rooms the link between pieces was a lot more obscure, making the handout that was given to you vital. Having an artist curate an exhibition isn't always successful, but in this case it was. The rest of that day was spent looking at some more of the exhibitions dotted around Venice, one featured Sean Scully which was fun to see, as I do like his large, simplistic paintings.

Looking back now I feel like I should have definitely taken a few pictures whilst I was in Venice, but unfortunately I did not. However I did take a few Snapchats:

Afterwards I was very exhausted, so much so that when I came home I unfortunately didn't really do any of my own work, apart from updating my main website with the pieces that I'd made over the summer. So I didn't complete my book, which I do still plan to do, but it won't happen for a while now, as I'm currently living in London, away from home. And a printer. I think the description of the work on my main website encompasses the ideas within the project perfectly.

I moved in to my halls on Wednesday and have been going to two or three galleries a day since then, which has been incredibly fulfilling. I was going to write about that in this blog post, but I think if I do one in a couple of days detailing all that I've seen it'll be better than writing a huge one now.

I've also started to watch Community, which is an enjoyable comedy that's centred around a study group at a community college. The creator, Dan Harmon, also makes Rick and Morty, which is an amazing cartoon that looks at the relationship between a young boy and his drunk, super-scientist of an uncle. Both shows are pretty great.

My course starts on the 5th, so until then I'll be going to galleries and seeing interesting things, which I continually look forward to.

Daily Snapchat:

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