Australia 53rd International Art Exhibition LA BIENNALE DI VENEZIA LA BIENNALE DI VENEZIA 1 Commissioner’s Foreword When Shaun Gladwell returned from dealing with reflections that are personal, from a range of sources – government, western New South Wales in early 2009 cultural and environmental. corporate, individual and philanthropic – he had accumulated images that were to where none sits as mutually exclusive from Claire Healy and Sean Cordeiro’s massive signal an extension to his work that was the other, conspicuous in its commitment. installation consumes the chapel of the included in the exhibition Think with the Ludoteca – its monumentalism and its I gratefully acknowledge the generous Senses – Feel with the Mind at the Venice stillness are like a memento mori as it assistance of our many public and private Biennale 2007. For Venice 2009 Shaun alludes to transience and impermanence. funding partners. I also warmly thank the is our artist for the Australian Pavilion. Vernon Ah Kee’s work represents themes artists, Tania Doropoulos (project manager Shaun’s involvement with the landscape of contemporary social and cultural politics, for Shaun Gladwell) and Felicity Fenner – and urban spaces – holds recognition of of Indigenous exclusion. But here the modern (curator for Once Removed) for their dedication the sense of place we Australians have in the representation of this exclusion is explored and commitment to presenting Australia’s history of our nation’s art. But his inquiring through long-standing emblematic symbols exhibitions at the Venice Biennale 2009. temperament and his keen interest in the that are representative of white Australian Doug Hall AM role of the culture of his own generation culture. In viewing Ken Yonetani’s installation Commissioner in contemporary life – both its ideas and it is impossible not to think of environmental participants – are indicative of the reach beauty or to feel for its vulnerability. Doug Hall AM is the former Museum Director of his imagination. He has transformed the for the Queensland Art Gallery where he was Four very different Australian artists in Venice responsible for the creation of the Gallery Pavilion into a personal tableau that explores mark our visual arts community’s commitment of Modern Art and the Asia-Pacific Triennial his unique sense of allegory – of place and to a now well-established pattern of supporting of Contemporary Art. time – which includes the artist himself as Australian culture in an international context. central to its iconographic presence. And this is prompted by the warm reception Venice is important to contemporary Australian and keen critical interest in Australian art; art. It is an inspiring context in which our something also enjoyed by architecture, cultural introspection – the things we value – literature, film and music. As with other is seen in an international context and given participants in Venice, this positive attention over to an enthusiastic public every two years. takes place in an environment where vainglory and nationalism are cast aside and where the Again, as in recent years, Australia’s presence emphasis on the value we have in our artists in Venice continues beyond its Pavilion. The is pre-eminent. nearby Ludoteca is the second venue and each of the artists exhibiting there has, in Australia’s participation in the Venice Biennale remarkably different ways, produced work reflects the nature of support for the arts 2 Australia 53rd International Art Exhibition 4 Australia 53rd International LA BIENNALE DI VENEZIA 5 Art Exhibition Shaun Gladwell MADDESTMAXIMVS – manner, performing freestyle skateboarding movement, and to reveal the subtle nuances Planet & Stars Sequence 2009 on the foreshore, as storm clouds gather and essential qualities of his performers’ and the ocean wallows and crashes (an act activities. This continues to result in poetic, of ‘picturing turbulence’ as the artist later hypnotic and meditative representations that Shaun Gladwell’s MADDESTMAXIMVS, described it). open the activities themselves to a wide range in the Australian pavilion for the 2009 of readings. Venice Biennale, brings together the Key elements that have developed through artist’s trademark slowed-footage video Gladwell’s subsequent practice were already In a short period of time Gladwell’s moving- produced two-channel video. Projected on human skull (Endoscopic Vanitas, 2009); approaches. Heat, and in particular dust, installations of figures undertaking acts of apparent in his early video works. Most image installations have become more finely either side of a suspended screen, the work and the latest of Gladwell’s ongoing series of distort the view. A helmeted figure in black physical virtuosity, with sculptural works crucially, the works pictured (or took the honed as sculptural studies of both bodily effectively links both levels of the Pavilion. Planet and Stars Sequence projects, involving emerges from inside the moving car through and interventions into the fabric of the viewpoint of) figures performing in outdoor, experience and the physics of gravity, motion Apology to Roadkill (1–6) (2007–2009) pictures both footage (Planet and Stars Sequence: the side window, slowly mounts the roof of the Pavilion itself. The result is a project rich in public spaces, on one hand disrupting – in particular centrifugal energy – and cyclical a black-helmeted motorcycle rider stopping to Barrier Highway, 2009) and residue (Absolute vehicle and stands upright. Every nuance of visual experience and conceptual interplay the social and architectural functions and time. Certainly, this formal circularity – a sense tenderly examine and cradle the carcasses of Event Horizon, 2009) of an aerosol-painting his movement is emphasised in slow-motion, between elements. Developed over a two- conventions of those spaces, on the other of the body in perpetual motion – has become grey kangaroos. These major video works are work undertaken by the artist kneeling on the transforming a potentially dangerous act into a year period, MADDESTMAXIMVS marks physically articulating their own experiences a central motif of Gladwell’s video work. This is joined by significant sculptural interventions shoulder of an outback highway. formal study in physical virtuosity as the body a shift from Gladwell’s earlier focus upon of place. This has continued over the past represented with a new intensity in Gladwell’s into the pavilion itself: the motorbike from embraces and balances the elemental forces of Each of these pieces is a major work in its urban environments and engages instead decade as Gladwell has worked with various MADDESTMAXIMVS project, in which the artist Apology to Roadkill (1–6) embedded into velocity and gravity that draw it deeper into the own right. They share the space of the Pavilion in a performative, personal exploration of performers – not just in Australia but also in shifts focus to the richly redolent Australian the outside wall of the Pavilion to create Australian hinterland. that is itself treated by the artist as a form of the boundaries and possibilities of a human Brazil, Europe, Japan, Korea and New Zealand outback, entering a long-standing set of a protrusion in the inner skin of the space; sculptural vessel, conveying a coherent yet Dr. Blair French relationship to the Australian hinterland. At the – picturing physical disciplines associated in discourses regarding land, place and space in and an especially constructed, functioning vigorously associative expression of a place same time, MADDESTMAXIMVS also looks part with youth and street cultures. Australian culture. 1:1 ‘sculptural’ replica of the famous V8 Dr. Blair French is Executive Director, Artspace a world removed from the Giardini. In this at differing experiences of time and being, ‘Interceptor’ car driven by Mel Gibson’s Visual Arts Centre, Sydney. The conceptual rigor and visual formalism Begun in earnest in 2007, MADDESTMAXIMVS context no single work dominates any other, in particular through the relationship of the ‘Max’ character in Mad Max 1 and 2. of Gladwell’s video works has ensured that takes its local cues from sources as varied human body to its immediate environment. but located as it is at the centre of the Pavilion, they never function as simple glorifications as Sidney Nolan’s ‘drought’ paintings and The Venice Pavilion project is completed by to be viewed from both sides and so requiring Gladwell’s first video exhibitions featured of urban street practices such as skating or director George Miller’s Mad Max film trilogy, a new multi-channel video work – Centred the viewer to return, approach and circle it works that pictured the artist himself tracing subsequently BMX riding, break-dancing, and is an ongoing project under which Pataphysical Suite (2009) – comprising more than once, Interceptor Surf Sequence skateboard passages through Sydney streets, capoeira, taekwondo and the like. From the Gladwell conceives, produces and exhibits a tower of monitors, each featuring the will without doubt linger in one’s memory. ‘kickflipping’ his board at Bondi Beach and outset Gladwell eschewed the fast and furious a variety of works in different configurations image of a different performer spinning on Here a camera tracks the same black V8 ‘surfing’ the water-wall of a newly inaugurated jump-cut editing conventions associated with (these works include photographs, sculptural the spot utilising their particular discipline Interceptor – parked outside the pavilion – public