Venice Biennale - Making Worlds

I feel I have neglected my blog again lately - I think the upheaval of the move is causing more disturbance than I thought so I have started up my meditation practice again - thankfully it is paying off and I feel much calmer and more grounded. I came back from a few days in Venice at the Biennale a week ago. I went with an artist friend and we stayed at the Hotel Casa Linger (an apt name!!) Basic and cheap (for Venice) accomodation in the Castello district so within easy walking distance of both the Giardini and Arsenale without having to get vaporetti! On the way we came to our first art work situated on the edge of the Grand Canal - a giant mirrored box which reflected weird images of the water, nearby buildings and the passers by and caused lots of amusement - it was like being in an outside hall of mirrors! This is me with a one thin and one fat leg! Of course before we started we needed a cup of coffee - this is one of the cafes - great fun and not very busy thank goodness! Here I am enjoying the first of several cafe lattes!
I want to share with you a few of my favorite artist's works - I took lots of photos as you can imagine and I have found it difficult to choose just a few - maybe I'll introduce some more of the artists whose work I enjoyed in future posts - meantime - this was in the main exhibition Palazzo in the Giardini - a very beautiful installation of black threads by the Argentinian artist Tomas Saraceno with the wonderful title 'galaxies forming along filments, like droplets along the strands of a spider's web'
Also in the Giardini in the Egyptian Pavilion was the work of the artist Adel El Siwi - tall, straw woven figures bowed us in!
I loved his work and his sense of humor - the exhibition was called 'Lightly Monumental' and it was!!
Some of the best exhibits were projections and artist films and impossible to capture so I am hoping I can find links for you if you are interested in seeing some of the work - below is Nathalie Djurberg (Sweden) who created a 'Garden of Eden' installation of enormous plants and several screens showing her rather disturbing feminist gothic animated films - (she calls them Claymation films) disturbing and brilliant - I saw one of her films at the Frieze Art Festival four years ago and it made an impression on me then!


Very different and equally powerful - Krzysztof Wodiczko projections of windows on the Polish Pavilion walls showed immigrants washing windows and chatting together outside while the viewers watched from the inside - the link HERE gives a lot more information about the work that was created for the Biennale - It had a profound effect on me and will stay with me for a long time
The link for the British Pavilion is HERE - I was inspired by Steve McQueen's film made in the Giardini and depicting it's other life once the Biennale was over and winter arrived. the work from artists in Northern Ireland was also strong - the most disappointing of all was the Welsh artist John Cale - I'm afraid to say it did nothing for me at all!

Well that's all for now!

'ANOTHER PLACE'

I've been so busy in the last few weeks with my pre moving house decluttering that I've neglected blogland! I'm almost ready for the first car load of STUFF to transport down to Plymouth tomorrow where I will be staying for 3 weeks before returning to Leeds for the final packing and cleaning of the house. Although I'm moving down to Plymouth I have decided to take some time out and defer my degree for a year - I'm going WALKABOUT and about this I will write something later on as I'm not starting until November - in the meantime inbetween the sorting, packing, going backwards and forwards from one end of the country I decided to mark the beginning of my decision to go WALKABOUT last Monday and go to ' ANOTHER PLACE' - it seemed a fitting start! I took the train to Liverpool and then to Crosby Beach, just a few miles north - as I walked from the station at Blundelsands/Crosby I turned around - this was behind me............... Liverpool Docks!

And this was ahead of me - I felt excited at the anticipation of what was waiting on the other side of the dunes...

THIS.........................
'ANOTHER PLACE' - 100 cast iron figures by the artist Anthony Gormley spread along 3 kms of beach and reaching 1 km out to sea. According to Antony Gormley, Another Place harnesses the ebb and flow of the tide to explore man's relationship with nature. He says "the seaside is a good place to do this. Here time is tested by tide, architecture by the elements and the prevalence of sky seems to question the earth's substance. In this work human life is tested against planetary time. This sculpture exposes to light and time the nakedness of a particular and peculiar body. It is no hero, no ideal, just the industrially reproduced body of a middle-aged man trying to remain standing and trying to breathe, facing a horizon busy with ships moving materials and manufactured things around the planet." The figures are life size casts of Gormley's body. Incredibly they all seem to be so different..........I felt so moved - just look at this face - he seemed to have a tear rolling down his cheek!

this figure was near to the dunes and not submerged by water very often - the patina of the rusty iron was incredible to feel - something you just can't do in a gallery!
And this one much nearer to the sea - spending much more time under water

Quite spooky really..........
I tried to capture the expanse of the beach but it felt impossible........... the high tides here can rise by 100ft and at certain times all 100 figures are completely submerged - I was lucky enough to catch a very low tide and walk 1km out towards the sea......

Next week I'm off to Venice to the Biennale - more about that in a couple of weeks!