I took a small group of students to Venice last month. We had a wonderful week of blue skies and sunshine… and we visited the Biennale, Torcello, Fortuny Palace, and a small group also went to Padua.
Here is some text from two of the students:I’d asked them to imagine they were working for a arts publication, and to write something…( I did this several years ago, for a-n and for The International Times…)
This was a profound and poignant celebration of marginalisation speaking and often screaming through, artworks that included contemporary, folk, sculpture, photography, textiles, craft, installations, and a strong focus on indigenous traditions, inviting the viewer to go beyond everyday held horizons.
I found myself easily being able to move between my own internal and external worlds, both real and imagined, where I floated and reflected on my own experiences of identifying as a ‘foreigner’ outsider, self taught artist, and the impact and influence this has had upon my work over the last 20 years. I visited in-seeing places and notions of fragility, rootlessness, othering, discrimination, destruction, loss, and grief, walking and waking on a path of respectful solidarity and into a place of exploration for new work.
My internal journey took me too dangerous and beautiful places, imagined universes, observational drones, robots intersecting with spirits and sacred rituals, supported with narratives held through ancestral memories and sacred knowledge.
There was a powerful sense of artists such as Madge Gill (1882-1961), Mounira Al Solh (b178), MAHKU Collective, Peter Hujar (1934-1987) and the collective circle of CATPC, using other worldly spirit guardians, as a way into unique visioning, setting their work within a context of ancestral and sacred knowledge, the eternal and the divine.
Foreigners Everywhere unleashed the silenced, unseen, unspoken voices, a wake-up call to all of us who are trying to make sense of and act upon reimagined futures where nothing that is human is foreign.
Sally Tripptree Artist.
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From Dennis the Menace (Dundee) to Venice.
Everyone looks at me weird or cautious but I’m going anyway; two weeks in Venice with a group of artistic Brits. staying with an Italian B&B host who admittedly “hates tourists”
To me the Biennale can be an overproduced showcase of nationalistic and art market types, all framed, presented and hyped in a way that leaves you struggling to determine the art from the ‘artification’ or dressing of the display space? The artistic ideas presented in what feels somewhere between a theatre set and a wedding photographer’s tacky backdrop.
There’s paint, curtains, seats, sofas, glass cases, LED lamps, projectors, speakers, sound-proofing, screens, screens and more screens. Blackout screens, light diffusion screens, transparent Perspex screens, screens for posters, tables for business cards pamphlets, books, shelves, signage, barriers… and oh SUBTITLES, lots and lots of subtitles everywhere, in a barrage to help you KNOW / SEE???!!!!!
Sometimes the biennale feels more about the interior design and the packaging than the art. So, you need to be prepared and deterministic to navigate the noise. I suggest either follow the evidence / there’s guide books or take a meander and make a departure when something calls.
Gradually, after you’ve adjusted your sensory perception and tuned in or through there’s loads of interesting stuff to discover. For me the whole labyrinth of expo and ancient city revealing some really good art.
I found I was drawn to and stayed longest with the analogue pieces, art that was either paper-based, drawing, printing and painting or sculptural, made of resistant material. It’s not that I’m a traditionalist, I just felt the sound and ‘multi-media’ works were lacking and underwhelming (or had been overwhelmed by the producers !!!) but I did join in with the military karaoke in the Polish pavilion which was a worthy effort and suitably dark, actually made by a Ukrainian art collective I believe?
But Venice is a great venue, playful and mystical. I felt comfortable there and safe, inspired to interrogate my own preconceptions and make stuff. Weird actually became my way and I relaxed about others, making new friends and seeing beyond.
“Foreigners Everywhere” was the biennale theme and I unselfconsciously began to make responses in that vein realising as much as I wanted to be or stay outside as the outsider, I was hooked xx
Scott Hawkins, Artist.