Not So Great Expectations

Venice is synonymous with tourism. It has been a destination sought out and romanticised about for centuries and remains at the top of many a ‘bucket’ list. It is a city that has positioned itself to benefit from its historical and cultural significance but this may in many ways have contributed to its current state of decay by oversubscription. “Though there are some disagreeable things in Venice there is nothing so disagreeable as the visitors.” As the American expatriate writer Henry James pointed out the expectations of Venice often differ somewhat from the actual experience. As I work my way through the hundred plus pavilions and exhibitions associated with this year's Biennale I ponder how many artists have used these ideas as a catalyst for their work.     

The Pavilion of Latvia with two exhibitions collectively titled Fragile Nature explore ideas of narrative and individual experience. Miks Mitre¯vics’ playful investigation of the sun demonstrates a rare insight into human nature. Entering a small room the visitor is presented with various dioramas reminiscent of a film-set in miniature. Projected backdrops of glistening water or blue skies, fans blowing tussock-like tufts and lights in a variety of colours are supported by makeshift tables held together with clamps. Figures cut out of photographs look longingly into the distance propped up by small piles of rocks, faux grass and sellotape. 

 

Miks Mitre¯vics’ from Fragile Nature

 

 

Miks Mitre¯vics’ from Fragile Nature 

 

It is a curious presentation made all the more interesting when you walk into the larger gallery space and realise that a series of postcard sized, wall mounted video works showing a range of holiday snaps are actually live feeds from the constructions in the previous room. This is highlighted when the gigantic form of another exhibition visitor walks through one of the ocean views interrupting the blissful image. Whether subconsciously or not Mitre¯vics’ has touched on the transient qualities of the Biennale’s host city. Aptly titled, this exhibition does not appear to be referencing an actual idea of the natural environment but more so it is a relationship to an invented experience that is the focus, an impression that is neither real nor fictional. For each visitor to the exhibition or indeed each tourist to Venice the perception of truth will be very individual and completely unlike the picture postcards in their heads.  

A few doors down is the Scotland Pavilion. On the second floor of the fading Palazzo Pisani overlooking the clustered rooftops of Cannaregio, is an exhibition by Martin Boyce. This show reflects or rather has No Reflections, as the exhibition title suggests, on associations between Dundee in Scotland and Venice, Italy. In producing this exhibition of sculptural and installation pieces, Boyce imagined what it was like to live in a place like Venice. Annotating the intricacies and foibles of a water based city which has changed little in hundreds of years and has definitely seen better days since it was considered a dominant power. Treating the exhibition space as a series of interconnected interior gardens, the artist explores the relationships of location and meaning by producing garden-like objects which could theoretically have significance in any city in the world. In the first room wax paper leaves become the detritus of millions of visitors scattered about raised concrete stepping stones reminiscent of garden features by the Italian architect Carlo Scarpa. A garden bench twists itself into a screen, no longer functional in either form, and a bird-box mounted on a wire mesh pedestal is trapped and useless on the wrong side of the glass windows.

 

 

Martin Boyce from No Reflections

 

 
Martin Boyce from No Reflections

 

 
Martin Boyce from No Reflections

 

Inspired by strange modernist mobiles created in 1925 by Jan and Joel Martel for an exhibition in Paris, Boyce has captured an overwhelming sense of “displacement and abandonment”, playing off the confusing and sometimes depressing dichotomies of Venice. Intending to take the exhibition back to Dundee Contemporary Arts following the end of the Biennale the artist “consider(s) the project as a chain of events, where the process of installing the show, seeing the work in the space and understanding how it functions is particularly relevant.”

It is in many ways a comment on being present in the final days of the Biennale that there is a hint of sadness in the air. The art in many ways attests to this impression. Following all the pomp and energy of the summer opening, many of the exhibitions and venues have lost their newness and gained a used and dusty veneer. It is more than just making farewells or lamenting the end of an experience, it is a particularly unsettling undercurrent, a realisation that this may be the last time you will see this place as it is. With all of its crumbling facades, flooded streets and dwindling locals Venice is changing and the Biennale may need to also alter its format in order to survive.

 

 

Dyddiau Du/Dark Days

One of the nice things about having time to spend in Venice is being able to see the several lengthy films included in this year's biennale. The UK’s representation is particularly film-heavy. England and Wales, for example, have produced beautiful, filmic works that are both well worth sitting through their 40 and 45 minutes respectively.

England's Steve McQueen has envisioned the giardini post-art. Emanating the eerie feeling of a stadium after a match, in this film, the giardini - evacuated - have been given over to a secretive world; human, animal, insect. The camera records with extreme attentiveness, layering a rich tapestry of shiny pebbles, confetti, leaves, and brightly-coloured insects. Huge ships suddenly appear, bizarrely, from behind trees, and the ground is covered with a band of thinly scouring Giacometti-like dogs that walk lightly among the piles of rubbish and leaves like shadowy spiders, barely touching the ground.

While McQueen's film takes the biennale's structures, both physical and imaginary, as subject matter, and is largely silent on any considerations of national representation, John Cale's work is an intimate confrontation with his home country, Wales. As the title, Dyddiau Du/Dark Days, alludes, the film suggests a fairly ambivalent bond. It is in turns both nostalgic and condemning. Building slowly between five screens, placed at awkward angles to each other in the cool dark of a disused brewery, its flickering, disjointed scenes show a ghost-like figure playing at an old upright piano; the floor of a disused slate quarry; Cale’s face contorted in effort as he climbs a Welsh mountainside. A soundtrack, aching, haunting, fades in and out. At times, the screens are left entirely blank.

Legendary for his part in the Velvet Underground, John Cale debuts as a visual artist with Dyddiau Du/Dark Days. The film, like McQueen’s, requires some staying power. Each screening is around 45 minutes in length. If you leave early, lulled into a false sense of security by certain wistful, quiet scenes, or overcome with frustration at its halting progress, you miss the sudden, brutal ending; the axis on which the film's underlying sense of unease turns.

John Cale's Dyddiau Du/Dark Days screened in a disused brewery on the island of Giudecca. The screen shots below are from the work.

Dreaming of the Vertigo - John Cale

Dyddiau Du Wales - John Cale

Maes-y-wern - John Cale

Send me away - John Cale

The making of Un-Pretty - John Cale