Venice Biennale: Viva l’Italia
A preview of Darryn George’s Folder Room, which is on its way to Venice.
Dunedin-based artist Darryn George will have work featured in the Palazzo Bembo during the Venice Bienale.
Builders working hard to get George’s panels finished.
These panels will become part of a seamless room for George’s installation in Venice.
A detail of the Folder Room panels that hints at George’s Māori heritage.
Dunedin-based Scott Eady will also be included at the Palazzo Bembo show in Venice this year.
One of Eady’s Ivans out the front of Wellington’s City Galley. Eady was included in the sculpture show, the Obstinate Object.
An Ivan in situ at the City Gallery.
Up close and personal with one of Eady’s Ivans.
The Milan Furniture Fair is done and dusted but Italy has another red-letter fair up its sleeve.
One of the world’s foremost arts festivals, the Venice Biennale will be staged from 1 June to 24 November this year. New Zealand’s National Pavilion artist for 2013 is Bill Culbert, but local artists Scott Eady and Darryn George have been included in one of the 47 collateral shows (collateral shows supplement the official pavilions, which traditionally feature one artist per country). The two artists are represented by the Nelson-based RH Gallery, which is supporting them to get to Venice.
The Palazzo Bembo will play host to Personal Structures, an ongoing art project curated by the Dutch arts organization Global Art Affairs Foundation. Eady and George have created new work for the show and will appear alongside emerging and established artists from around the world including such luminaries as Yoko Ono.
Scott Eady’s work will be a series of large brightly coloured balls, the Ivans, placed strategically to greet visitors as they enter the Palazzo Bembo. Their muted appearance and size is deceptive; these are in fact extraordinarily heavy cast bronze balls, produced by the Monument Sculpture Foundry in Onehunga, Auckland, which are then powder coated and painted to conceal their true nature. This playfulness is typical of Eady’s work, of which humour is often a characteristic. Eady is based in Dunedin, where he is a senior lecturer at Otago Polytechnic Dunedin School of Art.
Darryn George will show a large-scale installation entitled Folder Room. Glossy black panels, fabricated in New Zealand and shipped to Venice, will be erected and joined to create a seamless void, whose scale and texture is intended to disorient the audience. Fluorescent tubes softened by gauzy screens will be used to create an eerie ambience. George has asserted that his recent work has been informed by the Christchurch earthquakes, and has intended Folder Room to be a sort of monument to the victims and a space for contemplation.
Both artists are in Venice now, setting up their exhibitions, and will be sending us updates on their time at the Biennale while there. Next time, Darryn George will take us through setting up his work in the Italian city.
