Barthélémy Toguo,
The Generous Water Giant, 2022. Courtesy Bandjoun Station & Galerie Lelong & Co. Installation view, 23rd Biennale of Sydney, rīvus, 2022, Museum of Contemporary Art Australia.
Phot ography: Document Photography.
The 22nd Biennale of Sydney is testament to the capacity of art and exhibitions to move beyond reflection to lead dialogue, especially at times of crisis and cancellations.
Still from Human Flow, directed by Ai Weiwei.
IMDB/Amazon Studios
Artists have long tackled global issues, from war to human rights. While Picasso’s celebrated Guernica may not have stopped the Spanish Civil War (or any war), art still holds value, as witness and as truth teller.
Ai Weiwei, Law of the Journey, 2017, reinforced PVC with aluminium frame, 3 x 60 x 6m.
Courtesy the artist. Photograph: Ai Weiwei Studio
The 21st Sydney Biennale is the first to be directed by a curator of non-Western heritage. While the number of artists is modest, lost quantity is made up by quality.
Sydney Biennale has recovered from the missteps of 2014.
Lee Mingwei, Guernica in Sand. Image courtesy of JUT Museum and Sydney Biennale.
On the June weekend the Sydney Biennale closed, I arrived in Denmark to speak at a conference where the Greek theatre artist Alexandros Mistriotis proposed that “art liberates us from meaning”. A week…
Yingmei Duan is performing Happy Yingmei at this year’s Sydney Biennale. It’s a sign feminist performance art is thriving.
AGNSW
Until the end of the 2014 Biennale of Sydney in June, Chinese performance artist Yingmei Duan will live in a small forest built inside the Art Gallery of NSW. Visitors – as they have since the start of…
Ramesh Mario Nithiyendran, one of many collaborators in Deborah Kelly’s most recent creation.
N.E. Skinner
You may have heard of Deborah Kelly, the well-known Sydney-based artist with a work in the 2014 Biennale of Sydney entitled No Human Being Is Illegal (In All Our Glory). The work features a suite of life-size…
Should artists refuse to work with the Sydney Biennale – whose major sponsor has contracts to operate offshore detention centres?
AAP Image/Caris Bizzaca
Sydney will host its 19th biennale from March 21. It’s one of the most significant international art events on the local calendar. But questions have arisen over its connection to Australia’s policy of…
Honorary (Senior Fellow) School of Culture and Communication University of Melbourne. Editor in Chief, Design and Art of Australia Online, The University of Melbourne