Setting Storr By The Art, Not Marketing

The Age

Saturday June 9, 2007

Megan Backhouse

Amid the Biennale's dizzying array of shows, Australian works still manage to stand out, Megan Backhouse writes from Venice.

WHAT to do? There's a chandelier about to crash to the ground at the Singapore Pavilion, no queues yet for the French one - this year featuring work by the exquisitely voyeuristic Sophie Calle - and, at the very same time, the unveiling of Daniel von Sturmer's new installation at Australia's pavilion.

It's also the scheduled hour for the preview press conference, which, despite the mounting frustration of hundreds of journalists, opens 30 minutes late. But this is the Venice Biennale, so everyone waits.

There mightn't be any traffic noise, but come Biennale time there is nothing quiet about Venice. Street vendors vie for space with people handing out flyers, art newspapers and free ice-cream and the preview crowd scurry from pavilion to pavilion with bags, catalogues and - given the weather - umbrellas.

While there's much cynicism about biennales being purely marketing, Robert Storr, the first American to direct the event, insists there's nothing art fair about the Venice Biennale. "Art fairs are for people who buy art, I am far more interested in the general public," he says. "People who can only buy tickets."

No one can buy tickets until tomorrow, though, and for three days until then it's curators, collectors, sponsors and journalists filing through. The Australia Council jumped the vernissage (preview) gun by unveiling Callum Morton's bombed-out childhood family home on the eve of the first preview day. His huge, smoking relic was then the backdrop for the biggest Australian artists' party on record - a crowd of 700 dined on parmesan, prosciutto and prosecco to the raucous rock strains of the Histrionics.

While Morton's installation is outside a baroque palazzo, Susan Norrie's show is inside one. Juliana Enberg, artistic director of the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art in Melbourne and senior curatorial adviser for this year's Australian representation, says Norrie's videos (prompted by the rupture last year of a gas exploration well in East Java that caused an unstoppable flow of hot mud over an area about the size of Venice) have already caught the eye of overseas curators.

Most of the crowds, however, are still in the Giardini, where von Sturmer's exhibition attracted about 3500 people and queues on the first day. Visitors liked what they saw, with many overseas viewers commenting on his "elegant and interesting" installation of video screens and objects on a long plywood platform over both levels of the Australian Pavilion. "Very beautiful and creative," one American viewer said. "We have seen so many terrible things, so the queue was worth it."

But the overall mood this week was that there weren't so many terrible things and Storr's curated exhibition (outside one part of which was a giant vacuum cleaner sucking up puddles) was filled with works by more than 100 artists, including Bruce Nauman, Gerhard Richter and Raymond Pettibon.

Describing this exhibition (which also featured pieces by Australians Christian Capurro, Rosemary Laing and Shaun Gladwell), Storr says it is a "quite sober show at a time when people are intoxicated by cash. The cash will go away some day - I hope the works do not."

The Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement this year went to the Mali photographer Malick Sidibe, who is represented at Venice with his quietly dramatic Africa Sings Against AIDS series.

"Men from Mali are selling bags on the streets of Venice. It makes sense that a photographer from Mali get the award," Storr says.

© 2007 The Age

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