Aotearoa New Zealand at the Venice Biennale: A Brief History
The official image of the first International Art
Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia in which
New Zealand mounted a national pavilion - 2001.
Aotearoa New Zealand is a relative newcomer to the Venice Biennale, with 2009 marking our fourth official participation. For all of the New Zealand artists whose work has been shown within the Biennale, significant national and international opportunities have transpired, and a broadened awareness of and engagement with their work have resulted. New Zealand's presence at the Biennale, in tandem with the profiling of New Zealand contemporary art within international art fairs and curated exhibitions, is crucial to engaging audiences, curators, writers and collectors with the quality and breadth of the contemporary New Zealand art scene.
2001: The first New Zealand Pavilion
New Zealand first mounted an exhibition at the 49th La Biennale di Venezia in 2001. Two individual installations were exhibited at the Museo di Sant’ Apollonia, grouped under the title Bi-Polar; Jacqueline Fraser: A Demure Portrait of the Artist Strip Searched and Peter Robinson: Divine Comedy.
A traditional dawn ceremony to honour these two Ngāi Tahu artists (both of whom exhibit regularly internationally), was led by the kapa haka group Pounamu Kāi Tahu in Piazzetta San Marco, and captured the attention of international media and Biennale attendees alike.
A view of Peter Robinson's Divine Comedy
The title of Robinson’s exhibition comes from Dante Alighieri’s book Divine Comedy. The exhibition featured a series of sleek sculptures and digital prints (utilising a binary code translation of Dante’s Inferno) based around complex concepts of existence and drew together unlikely points of reference from quantum physics to Stephen Hawking's book A Brief History of Time.
Read further detail on Peter Robinson's installation in the official Press Kit for New Zealand's presence at La Biennale di Venezia in 2001.
A detail from Jacqueline Fraser's A Demure Portrait of the Artist Strip Searched
Jacqueline Fraser’s intricate installation A Demure Portrait of the Artist Strip Searched involving suspended drops of Italian damask fabric which formed a maze through which visitors could explore the sculptural and text-based interventions within the mazes’ interior. It was the first in a trilogy of installations that continued throughout 2001 at the Yokohama Triennale, Japan and the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York. The two exhibitions were welcomed back to New Zealand in 2003 when they were configured for display at City Gallery Wellington Te Whare Toi. Jacqueline Fraser’s A Demure Portrait of the Artist Strip Searched is now in the collection of the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa and has also been shown in ‘Toi Te Papa’.
Read further detail on Jacqueline Fraser's installation in the official Press Kit for New Zealand's presence at La Biennale di Venezia in 2001.
2003: Michael Stevenson's This is the Trekka
Michael Stevenson's This is the Trekka, with the Moniac visible in the centre of the image
In 2003 Berlin-based New Zealand artist Michael Stevenson’s project This is the Trekka took up residence in La Maddalena church in Cannaregio (the same venue Judy Millar’s project Giraffe-Bottle-Gun will occupy in 2009) to great critical acclaim. In his work, Stevenson draws our attention to particular historical moments by reproducing ‘artefacts’ from a series of historical case studies. The Trekka is New Zealand’s only nationally-produced vehicle. It was manufactured in Onehunga, Auckland in the late 1960s and early 1970s, with a chassis and motor imported from Czechoslovakia.
This is the Trekka investigated an attempt by New Zealand to create its own car industry, and the economic links between New Zealand and Czechoslovakia at the height of the Cold War. The exhibition used the visual language of a trade show at the time of the Trekka’s production, and included seemingly disparate components which collectively created a story about trade and nationalism. It included a wall made of New Zealand produced butter boxes and the Moniac – an historical device for recording the forces and checks of a nation’s economy through the passage of water through a complex series of valves and gates. This is the Trekka was acquired by the Te Papa Tongarewa National Museum of New Zealand and was shown in ‘Small World Big Town: Contemporary Art from Te Papa’ at City Gallery Wellington Te Whare Toi in 2005.
Read about Michael Stevenson's installation in the official Press Kit for New Zealand at La Biennale di Venezia in 2003.
2005: et al and the fundamental practice
2005 saw the collective et al. staged their richly complex installation the fundamental practice at La Pietà, iterations of which were subsequently shown at the Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane and Artspace, Auckland. ‘the fundamental practice continues a process of research and investigation, using techniques of procedure and presentation from other ideological systems – scientific, military, political, revolutionary. The installation suggests a control-room for a diabolical plan, performing texts, provoking and alluding to the ideologies we are conditioned by and their structures of delivery’*. Subsequent to et al.’s project at Venice, they were selected to mount altruistic studies within the prestigious Art Unlimited programme at Art 39 Basel 2008.
Read about et al's installation in the official Press Kit for New Zealand at La Biennale di Venezia in 2005.
2007: No official Pavilion, but the show must go on
In 2007, there was no official New Zealand representation at Venice, instead Creative New Zealand undertook a study of international visual arts events to assist them in strategizing for the future. There were two self-initiated New Zealand projects at the 52nd La Biennale di Venezia: the book, Speculation, which was published by NZ Venice Project and JRP|Ringier, and featured work by thirty New Zealand artists selected by eight curators. Over 2000 copies of the book were distributed to vernissage attendees.
One of a series of images from Brett Graham and Rachel Rakena's Aniwaniwa
Aniwaniwa by Brett Graham and Rachel Rakena was selected to be featured among the Biennale’s Collateral Events section. This elegiac and commanding work which melded sculptural forms with moving image and a haunting soundtrack was housed in an ancient salt warehouse in Dorsoduro, one of the six sestieri in Venice, and has subsequently had highly successful showings at City Gallery Wellington Te Whare Toi (2008), Waikato Museum of Art & History (2008), and within the ‘Ten Days on the Island’ Festival in Tasmania (2009). ‘Central to the work is the theme of submersion, as a metaphor for cultural loss. Locally, Aniwaniwa refers to rapids at the narrowest point of the Waikato River by the village of Horahora, where Graham’s father was born and his grandfather worked at the Horahora power station. In 1947 the town was flooded to create a hydro-electric dam downstream. Many historic sites significant to Graham’s hapu ‘Ngati Koroki’ were lost forever. In ‘Aniwaniwa’ water as the consumer of histories becomes the vehicle by which histories are retold. In many of Rachael Rakena’s works Maori identity is explored as being in a state of flux, like the borders of a river are constantly being redefined. Likewise, water is churned into electricity; electricity is transformed into light. Light makes such a work possible, and in a sense returns to a new generation memories of a town now consumed by water’*.
Other New Zealand artists at La Biennale di Venezia
There have been other occasions when works by New Zealand artists have been selected to show within the Venice Biennale or alongside it. In 1940, paintings by Frances Hodgkins were selected for a group exhibition representing Britain, but the event was thwarted by the outbreak of WWII and the works were never despatched.
Kate Coolahan displayed works within the 39th Biennale di Venezia in 1972. New Zealanders Rosalie Gascoigne represented Australia, along with Peter Booth in 1982 and twenty-five years later, in 2007, Daniel von Sturner did the same - along with Susan Norrie and Callum Morton. London-based Boyd Webb's work was featured in Aperto 86 and Richard Killeen's work was shown as part of 20 Australian Artists, an exhibition in Campo San Stefano organized in 1990 by gallerist Ray Hughes.
Creative New Zealand and other major supporters
Creative New Zealand, the Art’s Council of New Zealand Toi Aotearoa, has been the initiating institution and major funder for all four of New Zealand’s official Venice Biennale exhibitions. Additional supporters have included a committed community of patrons, the public galleries and museums who have supported the involvement of the commissioners and curators, and who have hosted New Zealand showings of the projects, artists’ gallerists, and the broader arts community.
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