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Remapping the art world: the most recent Sydney Biennale focused on the shifting encounters—cultural, political, economic, symbolic—that increasingly characterize our globalist century
Art in America, March, 2007 by Lilly Wei
"Z ones of Contact," the 15th edition of the Biennale of Sydney, was a wide-ranging exhibition of 85 artists from 57 cities, but it was "without a theme," insists Charles Merewether, the show's artistic director and curator. (1) A native of Australia with a doctorate in art history from the University of Sydney, and formerly the collections curator at the Getty Center in Los Angeles, Merewether prefers the terms "conceptual framework" or "concept" to "theme," noting--in an ironic and authoritative baritone--that "concept is a word actually used on television, so it isn't difficult." For the 2006 Sydney Biennale, Merewether calculated that, between 2004 and 2006, he spent approximately 300 days traveling, visited over 50 cities in 47 countries and met with 1,500 artists in search of distinctive works and artists who responded to his framework. In the process, he gathered a large group of politically and socially engaged works in all visual disciplines, from painting to performance (and including sound), loosely bound by the "concept" of "zones" or of "mapping," as he writes in the introduction to the catalogue. "In each case, these zones constitute different discursive practices, with their own rules of operation and accompanying values" and address the "increasing occurrences of the use and experience of being faced with demarcated zones in daily life." He then lists more than two dozen examples: e.g., war zone, hot zone, strike zone, buffer zone, transit zone, Western zone, Eastern zone, trade zone, comfort zone, erogenous zone, symbolic zone--although, tellingly, most of the zones refer to conflict and combat.
"Zone," as he deploys it, is locked onto other words like a universal suffix, but nonetheless, "Zones of Contact," which Merewether describes as a threshold to the global (and as a refresher course in geography and its implications) is as good a framework as any, expansive enough to successfully hang a biennial on. Many of the artists included were already well-known, of course, and were chosen to lend ballast to the event, but many others were not, coming from countries not frequently represented on the worldwide circuit. Taken together, the participating artists give an idea of what a sector of the international scene is like at the moment and how many active sites of contemporary practice there are. Approximately half of the work was specifically made for the Biennale, Merewether explained in a patchwork interview snatched at various points during the opening days, so "zones of contact was essentially a general brief that I wanted the artists to think through and react to. It was a risk, but worthwhile. I wanted it to be a show about articulating problems, about colonial legacies and contemporary situations, such as Lebanon, Palestine, Turkey and so on. And I was surprised. Some works far exceeded my expectations and endorsed my belief in enterprises of this nature as an opportunity to make work under different circumstances and on a grand scale, limited only by budgetary considerations. Biennales are not gallery shows."
Merewether also questions the premise that Western Europe is still "where it's happening" and wants to reset the art world's points of reference, to broaden or change its paradigms to include as a matter of course China, Japan, India, Palestine, the Balkans and other regions of great topical interest--and include them not necessarily as "diasporas." Nonetheless, "Australia," he acknowledges, "is stiff a special case, due to the tyranny of distance and the change in time zones; it's still a real challenge to bring international exhibitions here in a continuous way." Therefore, the Sydney Biennale remains crucial as an event that brings "exciting contemporary art and contemporary issues from around the globe to Australia." From around the globe in this instance meant that roughly two-thirds of the artists came from Eastern Europe and Russia, the Middle East and Asia, with surprisingly few representatives from the U.S., Canada, Western Europe, Australia or New Zealand, and just a smattering of artists from Central and South America or Africa. Of course, how to assign contemporary nationalities and identifies is a subject in itself, especially at international expositions, as peripatetic artists claim multiple residences on several continents. And often artists with exotic names that point to exotic origins actually live and work in Berlin, London, Amsterdam or New York and may have been born there. However, one thing is clear from this show and others like it: New York is no longer the mecca it was even a few years ago for younger international artists.
There were 16 venues for "Zones of Contact," some of them quite distant from each other--in the spirit, perhaps, of the far-flung inclusion that characterized this show, but no aid to convenient "contact." Merewether said that the works were matched with the sites that were most hospitable to them. In practice, however, the trek was daunting and made it difficult to see the entire Biennale for many, including this writer, who never did get to all of the locations. Also, while the official opening was June 8th, there was a series of staggered openings, with some on June 9th, and a number of the installations, when visited, were not quite ready for viewing--but call it part of the process. This Bieunale was concentrated in three major locations: the Museum of Contemporary Art and the Art Gallery of New South Wales, both regular Biennale hosts, and Pier 2/3. The other exhibition spaces were: Artspace; Gallery 4A at the Asia Australia Arts Centre; Australian Centre for Photography; Blacktown Arts Centre; Campbelltown Arts Centre; Hyde Park Barracks; Ivan Dongherty Gallery, College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales; Museum of Sydney; National Art School; Performance Space; SCA Galleries, College of the Arts, the University of Sydney; Sydney Opera House's Playhouse, Studio and Exhibition Hall; and Tin Sheds Gallery, Faculty of Architecture, the University of Sydney.
