Image: Andreas Angelidakis: Crash Pad for the 8th Berlin Biennale
The calendar of festivals, biennales and art fairs across the world continues to surge in numbers, to the point that most destinations today have some cultural event hopeful of attracting ever-wider audiences.
Super-curator (as we like to call them in the biennale context) Ho Hanru, has estimated that there are now over 300 biennales across the global art map, jostling for their own identity.
Several books and readers have been written on the topic – the biennale as a global phenomenon – and then several more have been written on the questionable demise of the biennale as we re-think its role with the rise of the art fair and shifting art market structures.
What better way to form your own opinion than to take a look for yourself!
Despite the cynics among us, these events are fantastic value for introducing us to a swag of artists we would ordinarily never see. On our own shores, the Biennale of Sydney will introduce 90 artists from 31 countries to Australia in March. Who are its competitors in 2014? We have cast our eyes off shore to see what is washing up.
“THE BIG ONES”
The big established reputable biennales, kick off this year with the 8th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art opening 29 May and continuing through 3 August. Curator Juan A. Gaitan said the exhibition will examine intersections between historical narratives and individuals’ lives.
Presented across three venues in Berlin – a city that has become an extremely exciting global hub for contemporary art – one of the focuses of this exhibition will be how the current cultural landscape sits within that 18th and 19th century built environment and historical becoming. Gaitan speaks about his exhibition in an interview with Pat Binder and Gerhard Haupt of universes in universe, a German-based site that has surveyed the world’s biennales since 1997.
Crash Pad by Andreas Angelidakis is the first commissioned work of the 8th Berlin Biennale. The room installation opens 25 January as a preliminary statement of the Biennale.
In July we see the return of the Liverpool Biennial under Artistic Director Sally Tallant and Curators Mai Abu El Dahab and Anthony Huberman. The 8th edition opens 5 July and continues through 26 October, a new northern hemisphere summer date. Like the Biennale of Sydney, several venues are used across the city from raw spaces, site responsive public works to museums such as Tate Liverpool and The Walker Art Gallery.
‘The cornerstone of the Liverpool Biennial’s attempt to differentiate itself has been its commissioning policy, set in stone in its second edition in 2002’, in an attempt to place the artists back at the centre of the exhibition, interacting with site and locality rather than this “blow in / blow out” model. Since its launch in 1999, Liverpool Biennial has commissioned over 200 new artworks
New to this year’s exhibition is the launch of Stages, an online journal that is a space for staging research generated from the Biennial’s year-round program, the first issue now downloadable. In recent years the writer/reader has become almost a satellite site for thinking associated with many biennales, the first to lead the way was dokumenta in Kassel.
The only biennale slated for August is the 5th Yokohama Triennial in Japan, an event which has had a bit of checkered past. Presented across the Yokohama Museum of Art and Shinko Pier Exhibition Hall for that popular raw site, curator Yasumasa Morimura has used Ray Bradbury’s science fiction novel as his inspiration, titling his triennial ART Fahrenheit 451 with the sub-title voyage into the sea of oblivion, picking up on Bradbury’s significance of “forgetting” in his futurist rendering.
Morimura’s statement says it will ‘make us recall things that have been inadvertently lost from our lives, things that have been perpetually forgotten by human beings, and particular things that have been lost in the contemporary age.’ It is scheduled to open 1 August – 3 November.
While you are in Japan why not plan your trip to also take in the 5th Fukuoka Asian Art Triennale (FT5) (6 September – 30 November), an auspicious event this year as it coincides with the 15th anniversary of the Fukuoka Asian Art Museum.
Unlike many biennales, this triennale is museum based. It was an extremely important addition to the global collection of biennales, the first to seriously focus on Asia under its former name – The Asian Art Show – which dates back twenty-five years and held every five years since 1980.
While Asian biennales have followed, such as Yokohama, Tsumari (Niigata) in Japan, Gwangju and Busan in Korea, Shanghai and Guangzhou in China for example, closest for its Asian focus is the APT in Brisbane. Details on FT5 and its website are yet to be released.
Two biennials wrap up the year, both opening in September: The 31st Bienal de Sao Paulo in Brazil, founded in 1951 is the second oldest to Venice; and the 10th Gwangju Biennale in Korea, another event well worth the airfare.
São Paulo has a well-developed website, however the exhibition is still in its development stage. Rather than an individual curator, the exhibition is shaped by a large international team with five visions driving this exhibition. The professional preview will be held 2 – 5 September with exhibition running 6 September through 7 December.
The Gwangju Biennale (opening 5 September through 9 November) will be curated by Jessica Morgan, The Daskalopoulos Curator International Art at Tate Modern, and recent president of the Jury of the Venice Biennale (2013). We understand the theme to be Unsettled, and while details on Morgan’s exhibition is yet to be released, her curatorial pedigree signals this as one of the highlights of the 2014 biennale calendar.
For those of you interested in design, you might want to consider the Gwangju Design Biennale, which is presented on alternate years to the Gwangju Biennale.
“THE EXOTICS”
And if this was not enough to set you day dreaming, why not match that bucket list holiday with an art event and think exotic!
The Fifth Marrakech Biennale will be held this year from 26 February through 31 March; or how about the 12th Cuenca Biennale in Ecuador curated by Jacopo Crivelli (28 March – 27 June). And for the brave, why not head to Senegal for the 11th Dak’Art event in Dakar opening 9 May through 9 June.
One a little less known is SITElines: New Perspectives on Art of the Americas (Santa Fe New Mexico), again with the popular theme for 2014 – Unsettled Landscapes – it looks at urgencies, political conditions and historical narratives across territory and trade. Opens 20 July through January 2015 (vernissage 17-19 July)
And if that list isn’t enough to set you day dreaming then you might consider the many other biennales around the globe in 2014 including: Quebec and Montreal (Canada), Bucharest (Romania), Sapporo (Japan), Kiev (Ukraine), Poland, Turkey and Kochi in Kerala Region (India).
