Real Venice

"Real Venice" is a Venice in Peril project whereby major artists will donate their creative vision for the benefit of the lagoon city.

To promote the cause and raise funds for its work, the Venice in Peril Fund has invited a group of distinguished international artists to photograph Venice and create a collection of original images of the city for the 2011 Venice Biennale.

Their work will be shown in an exhibition entitled "Real Venice" at the Abbey of San Giorgio Maggiore on the island of San Giorgio (next to the Cini Foundation). The exhibition is a special initiative for the 150th anniversary of Italian Unity of the Italian Pavilion. It will be followed by an exhibition in London at the premises of Phillips de Pury in November this year.

After the London exhibition, Simon de Pury will conduct a dedicated auction of some of these works, while the rest will be sold privately or through their artists' galleries, with the proceeds going to Venice in Peril. It is anticipated that the exhibition will also become a touring exhibition from January 2012, showing at many of the world's major international art institutions. The tour will be organised by the International Enterprises department of the Barbican Centre in London.

The artists in "Real Venice" are: Lynne Cohen, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Antonio Girbés, Nan Goldin, Pierre Gonnord, Dionisio Gonzalez, Candida Höfer, Tiina Itkonen, Mimmo Jodice, Tim Parchikov, Matthias Schaller, Jules Spinatsch, Robert Walker and Hiroshi Watanabe

The advisory board driving this project consists of: Anna Somers Cocks, Chairman of Venice in Peril and Group Editorial Director of The Art Newspaper, David Landau, collector, businessman and scholar; the curator and founder of Ivorypress, Elena Foster, who mounted a major photographic show at the 2006 Architecture Biennale, and Erica Bolton of Bolton & Quinn, Britain's leading cultural communications consultancy.

Elena Foster is the curator of the exhibition and the bilingual catalogue is published by Ivorypress, with essays by William Ewing, Maria Antonella Pelizzari and Giorgio Piersanti.

Real Venice - Collateral Event - Exit Strategies
Kurator: Elena Foster
Organisation: Anna Somers Cocks, David Landau, Elena Foster, Erica Bolton
Ort: Abbey of San Giorgio Maggiore on the island of San Giorgio (next to the Cini Foundation)

Künstler: Lynne Cohen, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Antonio Girbes, Nan Goldin, Pierre Gonnord, Dionisio Gonzalez, Candida Höfer, Tiina Itkonen, Mimmo Jodice, Tim Parchikov, Matthias Schaller, Jules Spinatsch, Robert Walker, Hiroshi Watanabe