Biennale of Sydney 2008

Vernissage/Preview: Tuesday, 17 June Events continue until Saturday, 21 June Opening Week (Monday, 16 June to Saturday, 21 June) features a vibrant range of events, functions, talks, discussions and performances, including a major Symposium at the Art Gallery of New South Wales.

Artists presenting performances and lectures throughout this week include: Gerard Byrne, Dora García, Ross Gibson, Dan Graham, Joan Jonas, William Kentridge and Stuart Ringholt. The Artists’ Party will be held on Wednesday, 18 June. Ticketed Event. The Biennale of Sydney exhibition will open to the public on Wednesday, 18 June.

Revolutions – Forms That Turn – works that spin, go in reverse, mirror, make noise and blow up! The Biennale of Sydney today announced highlights of its 2008 program, celebrating its 35th birthday with a sensational line up of artists and projects that will keep growing until opening day and beyond. From the extreme to the arresting, it hosts more Australian artists than ever before and includes the magical Cockatoo Island in Sydney Harbour as a major exhibition site, as well as premiering an extraordinary online venue – a first for a biennale worldwide. The free exhibition is expected to welcome more than a quarter of a million visitors, and more than 180 artists will participate – with over fifty newly created artworks presented alongside some of the world’s most ground-breaking art from the avant-gardes of last century. Celebrating this milestone exhibition, Australia’s leading international contemporary arts festival has drawn on the expertise of renowned curator, Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev. Ms Christov-Bakargiev said today: ‘I am excited to be presenting the 16th Biennale of Sydney in this anniversary year. With artists participating from around the world in the seven harbourside venues and on the internet, I hope Sydneysiders and all visitors will enjoy the experience of art across the city, and that many thousands more will log on around the world and experience Australia’s biennale online.’ Billed this year as a celebration of the defiant spirit, the exhibition will bring together some of the most revolutionary artists the world has ever known alongside the shining stars of today. The theme of the 16th Biennale, Revolutions – Forms That Turn, suggests the impulse to revolt, a desire for change, and seeing the world differently. Many works in this year’s exhibition will be participatory, encouraging people to step inside art and discover new ways of looking and thinking about life today. Movement is a strong feature – works turn, spin, go in reverse, mirror, make noise and even blow up. Audiences of all ages will be delighted, challenged and inspired by the wide range of works in this Biennale. Renowned South African artist William Kentridge will present a new work which expands his celebrated animations. The MCA – Museum of Contemporary Art – will display Maurizio Cattelan’s famed suspended horse Novecento, while Cockatoo Island will see more than twenty artists’ projects realised. Dan Perjovschi will scribble his famous drawings on the façade of the Art Gallery of New South Wales and at Pier 2/3, Janet Cardiff & George Bures Miller will create a spectacular sound installation – Murder of Crows. Some of the twentieth century’s most revolutionary works are being brought to Sydney and to Australia for the first time. These create a vibrant historical context for the voices of today. They include works by renowned artists such as Alexander Calder, Marcel Duchamp, Joseph Beuys, Jean Tinguely, Atsuko Tanaka and 2007 Venice Biennale ‘Golden Lion’ winner, León Ferrari. Artists will come from Asia and the Middle East, Europe, North and South America, Africa and the Pacific. Highlights include Qiu Anxiong, Gerard Byrne, Lara Favaretto, Anawana Haloba, Pierre Huyghe, Brian Jungen, Renata Lucas, Susan Philipsz and Michael Rakowitz. More Australian artists are included than ever before ranging from our most internationally renowned, such as Destiny Deacon, Simryn Gill, Shaun Gladwell, Rosemary Laing, Tracey Moffatt, Mike Parr, Julie Rrap and theweathergroup_U, to the rising stars of the moment, including Vernon Ah Kee, TV Moore, Raquel Ormella and Stuart Ringholt. The 2008 Biennale of Sydney is presented at some of Sydney’s finest harbourside sites and visitors can take the Biennale ArtWalk from venue to venue along the water’s edge. For the first time the exhibition will utilise the astonishing former prison and shipyard, Cockatoo Island. For the fifth time Sydney’s only remaining undeveloped historical wharf – Pier 2/3 in Walsh Bay – will feature as a venue. Sydney’s leading arts institutions, the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Art Gallery of New South Wales and Artspace will again be dedicated to the country’s foremost international art event. Artists’ talks, performances (including a new work by Pierre Huyghe at the Sydney Opera House Concert Hall), a symposium, film screenings, and family events will keep visitors engaged, delighted and challenged throughout the festival.

This edition of the Biennale also premieres a specially designed online venue www.bos2008.com/revolutionsonline. This is an experimental space that encourages discovery through artists’ projects, videos, texts, YouTube, songs and even a Second Life space, live streaming performances and links to existing art online. Log on, but be warned, it’s addictive! Audiences will be able to sign up to an email bulletin to receive updates on special events (go to www.bos2008.com to sign up). About the Biennale OF Sydney Founded in 1973, the Biennale of Sydney is ranked today as one of the world’s leading international festivals of contemporary art. Presented free to the public every two years over a twelve-week period to international critical acclaim, the exhibitions have showcased more than 1250 artists from over 60 countries. As Australia’s largest and best attended contemporary visual arts event (316,000 visits in 2006), the festival is renowned for hosting dynamic Opening and Closing Weeks, including the spectacular opening night Artists’ Party, regarded as Australia’s premier art world celebration.

PUBLIC PROGRAMS

The 2008 Biennale of Sydney exhibition will be supported by both an extensive public program and a multi-level education program, offered across a number of venues in the Sydney metropolitan area. In addition to the Artistic Director and a range of artists, a number of curators, academics, poets, philosophers, activists and others are travelling to Sydney to take part in the public programs associated with the 2008 Biennale of Sydney. Their participation in a variety of programs targeted at all audiences will allow diverse audiences to understand, engage with and challenge the works and ideas brought together under the theme Revolutions – Forms That Turn.

ARTISTS’ TAL KS

Many of the artists participating in the Biennale will travel to Sydney for the event and, through Artists’ Talks, will offer rare access and insights into their work. These talks will be held in venues throughout the three months of the exhibition, with five days of Artists’ Talks during the opening week. Visit www.bos2008.com closer to the opening for details of talks and locations.

ARTISTIC DIRECTOR ’S TAL KS

Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, the Artistic Director for the 16th Biennale of Sydney, will deliver several exhibition-based talks and will conduct focused walk throughs for audiences at different times throughout the three months of the exhibition.

PERFORMANCES AND LECTURES

The 2008 Biennale of Sydney exhibition will be supported by a performance and lecture program, offered across a number of venues. These events have been designed to excite and inspire a range of audiences, from art lovers to the general public.

William Kentridge at Cockatoo Island on Tuesday, 17 June. 3 pm. Free

Dora García at The Studio, Sydney Opera House on Thursday, 19 June. 6.30 pm. Tickets available www.sydneyoperahouse.com

Dan Graham at the Museum of Contemporary Art on Friday, 20 June. 6 pm. Tickets available www.mca.com.au

Ana Prvacki at the Museum of Contemporary Art on Tuesday, 17 June. 6 pm. Tickets available www.mca.com.au

Joan Jonas at the Centenary Auditorium, Art Gallery of New South Wales on Saturday, 21 June. 5 pm. Tickets available www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/home

Ryan Gander at the Domain Theatre, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Wednesday, 18 June. 4.30 pm. Tickets available www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/home

Liam Gillick at the Centenary Auditorium, Art Gallery of New South Wales on Wednesday, 3 September – Friday, 5 September. 2 pm daily Tickets available www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/home

SYMPOSIUM AND PUBLIC CONVERSAT IONS

The Biennale Symposium Friday, 20 June – Saturday, 21 June In partnership with Macquarie University and the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS). The Symposium will feature artists, writers, anthropologists, curators, filmmakers and activists in conversation, as well as a number of keynote addresses. The Biennale Constellations Monday, 16 June – Thursday, 19 June Held at diverse venues including Cockatoo Island and the western suburbs of Sydney, the Biennale ‘constellations’ are public conversations involving a wide range of participants on topics related to contemporary art, its place in society, cross-cultural and urban experiences, cultural politics and the making of art exhibitions. In collaboration with the Centre for Contemporary Art & Politics (UNSW).

CATALOGUE

More an Artists’ Book than a catalogue, the publication features 160 black and white drawings by more than 130 artists. Existing drawings by historic artists, including Marcel Duchamp and Jean Tinguely, are juxtaposed with new drawings by artists such as Vernon Ah Kee, Paul Chan, Simryn Gill and Michael Rakowitz. The book also includes essays by Carolyn Christov- Bakargiev, Iwona Blazwick, Jonathan Crary and Charles Harrison, and additional contributions by curatorial ‘comrades’: Iara Boubnova, Natasha Conland, Massimiliano Gioni, Raimundas Mala‰auskas, Jessica Morgan, Hans Ulrich Obrist, Hetti Perkins, Kathryn Smith, Russell Storer and Jane Taylor, as well as an anthology of historic and contemporary authors. The catalogue is published by the Biennale of Sydney in association with Thames & Hudson.

Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev

Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev is a writer and curator based in Rome, Turin and New York. She is currently Chief Curator at the Castello di Rivoli Museum of Contemporary Art in Italy. Previously, she organised exhibitions as an independent curator in Europe and was Senior Curator at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center – a MoMA Affiliate from 1999 to 2001. In 2001, she was a jury member of the 49th Venice Biennale. Interested in the relations between historical avantgardes and contemporary art, she has written extensively on the 1960s Arte Povera movement. Her book Arte Povera was published by Phaidon Press in 1999. She published the first monograph on the work of South African artist William Kentridge, which accompanied Kentridge’s first touring retrospective exhibition (Palais des Beaux Arts, Brussels; Serpentine Gallery, London; MACBA, Barcelona) in 1998–1999, and the first monograph on Canadian artist Janet Cardiff (P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, New York, 2001), as well as a monograph on the work of Pierre Huyghe (Skira, Milan, 2004).

As an independent curator, she organised exhibitions including Molteplici Culture, Rome, 1992, and Il suono rapido delle cose, a homage to John Cage, co-curated with Alanna Heiss for the Venice Biennale in 1993. As part of the curatorial team for Antwerp ’93: European Capital of Culture with Iwona Blazwick and Yves Aupetitallot, she devised the international survey exhibition On taking a normal situation and retranslating it into overlapping and multiple readings of conditions past and present at the MUKHA in Antwerp (1993). In 1997, she organised Citta-Natura, a city-wide exhibition of international artists including Lawrence Weiner, Giovanni Anselmo, Mario Merz, Marisa Merz, Jannis Kounellis, Willie Doherty, Gary Hill and Mark Dion, held in Rome in museums and public spaces, including the zoology museum to botanical gardens. She then co-curated with Laurence Bossé and Hans Ulrich Obrist, La Ville, le Jardin, la Memoire at Villa Medici in Rome (1998–2000), which included new projects by over 100 artists ranging from Janet Cardiff and Olafur Eliasson to Cai Guo Qiang and Natascha Sadr Haghighian. As Senior Curator at P.S.1 – a MoMA affiliate – she was an initiator and co-curator of Greater New York in 2000, a collaboration with The Museum of Modern Art that marked a generation of new art from the United States, with over 120 artists included. She then curated a historical exhibition on international art in the 1980s, Around 1984: A Look at Art in the Eighties (2000). She also organised solo shows of Georges Adeagbo, Santiago Sierra, Michael Rakowitz and Nedko Solakov. In 2001, she curated the first retrospective exhibition of Janet Cardiff ’s works, including collaborations with George Bures Miller and the group exhibition Animations that explored the ways artists around the world today – from Pierre Huyghe to Damian Ortega – are using animation, both returning to the early twentieth century utopian beginnings of the medium or approaching high-tech software programs.

She was appointed Chief Curator at the Castello di Rivoli Museum for Contemporary Art in January 2002. Her first project at the Castello was Matrix.2 by Francis Alÿs, an automated answering system for the museum (2002). In 2003, she organised the group show The Moderns / I moderni, which explored new modernist perspectives in the works of younger visual artists and sound artists from around the world. For the Castello di Rivoli, she curated a second survey exhibition of works by William Kentridge in early 2004, an exhibition which toured throughout 2004–05 to the Kunstmuseum K20 in Dusseldorf, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Montreal, and the Johannesburg Art Gallery, Johannesburg. This was followed by a solo exhibition of works by Pierre Huyghe in 2004. In 2004, she also organised a survey of works by American postwar artist Franz Kline, which was followed in 2004–05 by the group exhibition Faces in the Crowd / Volti nella folla, co-curated with Iwona Blazwick, an exhibition exploring figuration as an avant-garde practice from Édouard Manet to Anri Sala, Song Dong and Destiny Deacon through paintings, sculptures, installation, photography, film and video works by over 100 artists from 1873 to today. In 2005, she co-curated with Francesco Bonami The Pantagruel Syndrome. T1 TorinoTriennaleTremusei, a project which opened in November 2005 and which explored excess, conceptual gigantism and the fragility of our pantagruelian world, through two solo exhibitions (Takashi Murakami and Doris Salcedo) and a city-wide group exhibition of works by 75 younger artists from around the world, including Tamy Ben-Tor, Fernando Bryce, Sebastián Díaz Morales, Jin Kurashige, Araya Radsjamroensook and Apichatpong Weerasethakul. Christov-Bakargiev graduated Magna cum Laude from the University of Pisa, Faculty of Letters and Philosophy, in 1981, majoring in literature and art history. Her master thesis was on the relation between contemporary poetry and painting. She is married and has two children, Lucia and Rosa.

16th Biennale of Sydney 2008
REVOLUTIONS – FORMS THAT TURN
Künstlerischer Direktor: Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev

Künstler: Allora & Calzadilla, Francis Alÿs, Ayreen Anastas, James Angus, Ibon Aranberri, Micol Assael, Pedro Barateiro, Kelly Barrie, Thomas Bayrle, Richard Bell, Hans Bellmer, Tamy Ben-Tor, Gordon Bennett, Lene Berg, Joseph Beuys, Thomas Bock, Mark Boulos, Atelier Bow-Wow , Chris Burden, Christoph Büchel, Gerard Byrne, John Cage Alexander Calder, Janet Cardiff & George Bures Miller, Augustin Victor Casasola, Maurizio Cattelan, Paul Chan, Chen Xiaoyun, CLAIRE FONTAINE , Gianni Colombo, Attila Csörgo, Destiny Deacon, Guy Debord, Jeremy Deller, Simon Denny, Mark Dion, Emory Douglas, Marcel Duchamp, Sam Durant, Neville D´Almeida, Olafur Eliasson, VALIE EXPORT, Geoffrey Farmer, Harun Farocki, Lara Favaretto, Leon Ferrari, Yevgeniy Fiks, Fischli / Weiss, Virginia Fraser, Rene Gabri, Ryan Gander, Dora Garcia, Ross Gibson, Simryn Gill, Liam Gillick, Shaun Gladwell, Dan Graham, Rodney Graham, Anawana Haloba, Gary Hillberg, Abbie Hoffman, Rebecca Horn, Pierre Huyghe, Isidore Isou, Joan Jonas, Brian Jungen, Ranbir Kaleka, Mary Kelly, William Kentridge, Yves Klein, Jannis Kounellis, Balang Kubarrku, Bari Kumar, Jin Kurashige, Rosemary Laing, Richard Larter, Tim Lee, Klara Liden, Renata Lucas, Adolf Luther, Len Lye, Anna Maria Maiolino, Nalini Malani, Kasimir Malewitsch, Piero Manzoni, Marcellvs L., Gordon Matta-Clark, Tommy McRae, David Medalla, Mario Merz, Marisa Merz, Darius Miksys, Tina Modotti, Tracey Moffatt, László Moholy-Nagy, TV Moore , Reinhard Mucha, Saburo Murakami, Bruce Nauman, Hélio Oiticica, Yoko Ono, Raquel Ormella, Giulio Paolini, Cornelia Parker, Mike Parr, Giuseppe Penone, Dan Perjovschi, Lia Perjovschi, Georgy Petrusov, Paul Pfeiffer, Susan Philipsz, Guiseppe Pinot-Gallizio, Adrian Piper, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Ana Prvacki, Pushwagner , Qiu AnXiong, Michael Rakowitz, Man Ray, Doreen Reid Nakamarra, Stuart Ringholt, Alexander Rodtschenko, Julie Rrap, Luigi Russolo, Natascha Sadr Haghighian, Sharmila Samant, Hans Schabus, Carolee Schneemann, Tony Schwensen, Robert Smithson, Michael Snow, Nedko Solakov, Jesús Rafael Soto, Vivan Sundaram, Emily Sundblad, Atsuko Tanaka, Javier Téllez, theweathergroup_U , Miroslav Tichy, Slavko Tihec, Andrei Ujica, Victor Vasarely, Peter Watkins, Clemens von Wedemeyer, Lawrence Weiner, Gil Joseph Wolman ...