Drawing : Venice

Showing posts with label Venice. Show all posts

Friday, 31 July 2026

Venice Biennale 2026: Part one

My focus when visiting Venice Biennales has usually been on drawing, but this year there are a lot of exhibitions devoted to the ethnic traditions of the artists involved, and drawing is not always central to those cultures. I have therefore decided to simply show more of what I felt moved me or gave me pause for thought, especially as the biennale selection process does redress a Eurocentric balance and I would like to support the work in attempting to do that by the sadly dead before it opened curator Koyo Kouoh. The 61st Venice Biennale is entitled 'In Minor Keys' and it focuses on quiet, overlooked, and non-centralised voices. It was fascinating to watch videos of artists talking about their obsessions and so many of them saw art as central to their lives, without it, one artist from Kenya stated, they would have no need to carry on living. It was a relief to see so many alternative voices, even if I questioned one of the premises of the biennale which was to show that the world of the art market was not the only art world. There are many curators, buyers and art gallery owners who would I thought be going to see this Biennale and who I'm sure would be thinking about contacting those artists still alive and who were showcased in Venice, who they felt were 'under represented'. The careers of these artists might then take a step onto another level as they are shown on the world art market stage. Something that I realise is nothing new, on the plane over to Venice I was reading Martin Gayford's Venice: City of Pictures and he writes about artists such as Bellini having to balance two worlds. The desires of the church to have meaningful images made of significant Biblical moments and the needs of a new rising class of rich art cognoscenti, who wanted the best money could buy, for their own private collections. They wanted to be able to show off to others that they had the purchasing power to have paintings made just for them. Going into one church, I saw this what I think the church literature said was a painting by Tintoretto, but which doesn't look like his style, that for me summed up the tension between the need to re-create a religious moment in paint and the need to satisfy a patron.

Tintoretto, perhaps not

In this painting by Tintoretto or someone who was painting in Venice around the 16th century, you can see the tension between two needs.The painting was obviously completed as an image that was to visualise a moment from a religious text and then the donor must have insisted his portrait was put into the image, causing an awkward disjointed picture to be produced, in which the two figures in the painting bear no relationship between each other, except that they both stare out at whoever is looking at it.

This time in Venice I felt far closer to many of the artists showing at this Biennale, than I do to the art stars of galleries such as Gagosian, even if some of those art stars are ex students of mine. I could look at some of the work this year and think, oh yes that is achievable with the resources I have available; in fact there were times when I looked at certain work and thought, "I've dealt with that idea myself and my work could sit in the company of these other artworks without shame". I'm already harping on about myself I'm afraid and this is very much a reflection of the fact I no longer teach. My earlier reports on biennales were to help students who undertook the drawing strand of fine art, find a way through the mass of work they would be confronted with, but I no longer have that responsibility, so have the luxury of simply reflecting on things that helped me organise my thoughts in one way or another but teachers never stop teaching, so there will always be some reflections on how work seen can help generally with art practice.

The two main exhibition spaces are the Arsenale and the Giardini but there are also collateral events that you bump into all over the city and I will begin with one of those, simply because of a sticker I saw on a lamppost right next to the place we were staying.

The sticker suggested that "cultural wars numb and disarm us" as Capital gets on with reality. So was I just fooling myself going round these exhibitions and thinking that art could effect some sort of social change or believing that it could raise awareness of the difficult issues that confront us all, at a very difficult moment in the world's history.

The Venice Biennale doesn't happen in isolation, there are ongoing wars, famine, civil upheaval, global warming and many other issues going on at the same time. Therefore

I find it difficult to separate out the art from an underlying awareness of the world's general 'unease' with itself. There are small flyers pasted up all over the city and several of these ask direct questions as to whether or not I should be there, as the biennale was a conflicted vehicle, many pavilions representing governments that had poor track records in human rights, or who were engaging in war or were being accused of genocide. So perhaps my first post on this year's biennale ought to be one reflecting on a chance encounter in a repurposed church of the work curated by a PussyRiot member, an exhibition devoted to giving a voice to those people in Russia who have been rendered invisible to those of us who live in Western Europe. It was also I suspected the exhibition the small sticker I had read was referring to. By exhibiting in Venice, it is suggested, the people who staged the exhibition become part of the art system and in doing so their exhibition becomes part of the spectacle.

The Pavilion of (DIS)SENSE was held in the ex-church of San Leonardo. A place that at first I thought was a comment on the status of art's greatest star, Leonardo da Vinci, but my brain was racing ahead of itself. In the entrance to the pavilion was a poster depicting Putin riding the Venetian winged lion

In the foyer was a copy of an exhibition catalogue of a Pussy Riot curated show dedicated to political prisoners, illegally detained in Russia, 'Resistance Imprisoned'.

Resistance Imprisoned was an exhibition bringing together drawings, texts, embroideries, photographs, and objects, all of which had been created by political prisoners. Among them being Nadya Tolokonnikova, co-founder of the feminist collective Pussy Riot, who is now an international figure of resistance to authoritarianism, imprisoned in Russia in 2012 for daring to sing against Putin in a Moscow cathedral, since her release, she has continuously transformed her experience of incarceration into an artistic weapon.

I have posted before on the uses of paper in prisons. At the time I wrote, 'In jail, the everyday things we take for granted have their values changed. Paper, in the form of books, magazines, letters, toilet paper or simply rubbish becomes valued not only for what it is, but for what it can become.' Pinned to the exhibition wall were a series of small images made by Russian political prisoners and these images brought me to tears, not necessarily because of their artistic power, but by demonstrating to myself how art can be made about the human condition in almost any circumstances and that as a form of communication it can thrive under the most harsh conditions. These small drawings were made on torn off sections of prison sheets, information flyers, envelopes, notebook pages and other scraps of material. As the curator, Nadya Tolokonnikova, states, the cell becomes the studio.

The text becomes the cell of imprisonment out of which someone needs to escape

The text above is about toiletries and is issued by Correctional institution FKU T-2 of the Russian Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN) for the Lipetsk Region. It identifies a standardised issue pack for women entering or held within the Russian prison system. The identification numver ТУ 15.12.12-001-08828158-2020 is a Russian technical specification number, similar to a manufacturing standard and it relates to a particular toiletries kit that contains:

Toothpaste, 30 g – 1
Sanitary pads – 10
Toilet soap, 100 g – 1
Toilet paper, 25 m – 1

All of these images were simply pinned to black paper and below each image the text was set out as below:

Name:
Born:

Sentence:

Crime:

Like so:

Some more of the images from the exhibition:

I am not going to critique them as individual works of art, these are works of resistance, but they are still artworks and as such deserve being looked at and reflected upon just as much as the images that would have been on the walls of this church before it was deconsecrated, or the many images that I will be showing of other contemporary art work I saw when I was in Venice.

Where the alter would have been in the church, on the floor was a photo-collage entitled 'Victoria' by Katia Margolis, an image that pays tribute to a Ukrainian cultural figure killed by Russian aggression, the late writer and researcher Victoria Amelina.

Katia Margolis: Victoria: 2022

A 'T' shirt available in the exhibition stated the obvious but it still worked.

Death in Venice

So my first report on Venice this year is a political one, but one that hopefully puts the rest of the work I will be talking about in a proper perspective. It also is a reminder of the fact that drawing is the most democratic of the visual arts and that in times of crisis, it can be used as a powerful tool for the communication of individual trauma within political repression.

Wednesday, 21 August 2024

Venice Biennale 2024: Part four

There was a large section of the biennale devoted to the portrait, and of all the various approaches the one that made most sense to me was the work of Dalton Paula. His Full-Body Portraits (2023-24) were from a series of sixteen paintings of historical figures of African descent who led, or were involved in, anti-slavery resistance movements in Brazil. It was however the way that he treated the painting of these images that impressed me. He had laid white grounds down for each painting and had left gaps in the paint where the white showed through as cracks or fissures in the image. A stylistic device that suggested that the gaps were metaphors for images of people whose very appearance was constructed upon a white western model. Each of the figures is dressed in western style, standing or sitting in some sort of relationship with western articles of furniture. They inhabit a western world that totally dominates the Brazilian society that these people existed in.

Dalton Paula: Sketchbook study

Dalton Paula

The work of Xiyadie, a father, farmer, gay man, migrant worker and artist, reminded me that the term 'artist' tends to single us out and that we are also fathers, mothers, factory workers, worried old men, happy young women, gardeners, walkers, mountain climbers, politicians, refuse collectors, cleaners and botanists. He cuts paper into visual narratives of his life, images that have documented his life as a queer man in China. For instance 'Sewn' (1999), describes his difficulty in accepting his sexuality while trapped in a heterosexual marriage. Pain and the helplessness of being trapped in a domestic setting are suggested by a huge needle piercing the roof of his house, while a large snake slithering inside him represents his desire. His images are allegories, but because they are made, by cutting out thin white paper and mounting it on black, then highlighting areas in a very limited palette, they seem very fragile, as if the life depicted could at any time fall apart.

Xiyadie: 'Sewn' 1999

Xiyadia: Detail

Xiyadia: Gate

Yuko Mohri wasthe artist representing Japan this year. Her work done by inserting wires into decaying fruit, 'Decomposition', was a demonstration of how you could generate sounds and light from a very natural process. When you insert wires into the fruit you in effect re-create the fruit as a battery. The juice in a lemon, acts as an electrolyte, while the wires act as the battery's terminals. When the wires are inserted into the fruit, chemical reactions occur that create an electric current. The fruits’ internal state is shifting constantly as it decays, which in turn is modulating the pitch of a sound or the intensity of a light. At the same time the fruit is emitting a sweet smell of decay, and its exterior is looking more and more withered or going brown. The fruit was presented on items of furniture that felt as if they had been found in a second hand shop, and old cabinets had been reconfigured to take lights or to now become speakers.

Yuko Mohri

My thoughts about art working as a battery and the idea of it working as a form of energy transmission were immediately triggered and I began rethinking some of my ideas related to sculptures using electrolysis. I had already done several drawings related to sculptures that also worked as electrolysis tanks, using metal coating from copper terminals via dilute aqueous solutions of copper sulphate and sulphuric acid. LEDs are so sensitive now that they only need a tiny amount of electricity to make them glow. I really do need to get back to some of my ideas and re-develop them, which is one of the reasons you go to these exhibitions, there is always going to be something that sparks off either a new idea or gets me to return to old ones refreshed.

In particular an artist from South America really did enthuse me to get back to my large complex drawing ideas. I have sort of avoided finishing some of these, not wanting to put in the effort, as it does involve a lot of concentration and physical control to cover large areas of paper. This is not just about sustained drawing invention but I also have to have enough formal control to enable some sort of visual coherence to be constructed. This has often in the past meant lots of adjustment and removal of initial invention, so that the various elements can fit together as a whole.

Santiago Yahuarcani is of the Aimeni clan of the Uitoto Nation of northern Amazonia, which is at present thought of as part of Peru. His images collect together the memories told by his ancestors, the sacred knowledge of medicinal plants, the continuing existence of nature spirits and Uitoto creation myths. For Yahuarcani both the landscape and its inhabitants are conscious, because he believes in an animist view of the world. The work is in effect a conversation with the artist and his surroundings, a conversation that is facilitated by the artist's mind inhabiting the plants, trees, and animals of the Amazon, as well as conjoining with creatures from spiritual worlds and other powers that emanate from the landscape he lives in.

Santiago Yahuarcani: Fight between yucca worm and grasshopper: 2022

Santiago Yahuarcani, Shiminbro, el Hacedor del sonido (2024

I went back to the Arsenale to look at Santiago Yahuarcani's work twice and if I had been in Venice for longer would have done so again and again. Each time I could see more visual ideas and the way he fitted it all together was terrific and so exciting. He had also used some ideas that I had come up with myself, such as fish slippers and he had no worries about using multiple and various scales in the same image. I of course looked him up on line and realised like myself he also made images about particular isolated narrative aspects of the mythos he was working with, such as his 'Fight between yucca worm and grasshopper', which again I emphasised with.

Santiago Yahuarcani: Details

The work of Santiago Yahuarcani re-energised me and reminded me that you can make work that is full of complicated detail and yet it can also be funny, exciting, inventive and in Yahuarcani's case colourful. Above all, looking back on the images I took when there, I'm very aware that instead of reflecting on the exhibitions visited this year, I ought to get on with my own work. I have a stained glass window to finish and have already returned to making large drawings that fit together to create a complex narrative about my own world and how strange that is.

Fish slippers

Saturday, 24 August 2019

Venice Biennale 2019 Part four

As always several artists were dealing with social/political agendas, some I thought were more successful than others.

Renate Bertlmann

Renate Bertlmann exhibiting in the Austrian pavilion was particularly interesting as her large wall installations were complex collages of drawing, photography and text, reflecting her long term program of “Discordo ergo sum” or “I dissent, therefore I am”. She sets out to ironically subvert and redefine social constructs. In particular she takes symbols such as those for gender relations, role models or power structures and then examines how they can become enmeshed into diagrams for change. The transformative potential of art within a sociopolitical context is something I am personally very interested in and even though much of her work is now over 30 years old, I still found it engaging and watching other people spending time closely reading her images, realised that others still found these complex diagrams for change pertinent to today. Her work reflects Ingeborg Bachmann’s proposition that, “Representation requires radicalisation and comes from coercion.” We so often forget about the 'coercion' aspect of representation, but if you think about how the present government has been channeling monies away from the arts in education, you can see that they are very aware of the power of alternative representations. The image that was used by the pro-Brexit campaign of thousands of refugees potentially entering the country if we didn't leave Europe being a typical example of how political parties use representations to their own ends to coerce people into thinking like them.

It is impossible to escape from the socio-political context of art when going somewhere like Venice, every time you step into a national pavilion you are reminded of the various political issues that continue to circulate in readings of situations like these. The art world and its various fairs and associated constructs can at times seem to be at total loggerheads with the reality of day to day political oppression, war, media manipulation, data control, gender inequality and poverty. Especially in a time of post-truth, people don't know where to make a stance, how do you decide what is right and what is wrong? At the end of the day you have to trust in your instincts and have a belief in yourself, if not you would never get out of bed.

I will leave you with my thoughts on what I found to be a very difficult to stomach art work. Christoph Büchel has had a ship that was raised from the bottom of the Mediterranean transported to the dockside of the Arsenale. Entitled “Barca Nostra” (Our Boat), the ship sank with more than 800 refugees on board, all but 27 of which drowned. I have read various estimates as to how much this decision to move the boat to Venice cost, all of which are in the millions of euros. Büchel says that he wants to raise awareness of the situation, but I find this very problematic. As this blog is about drawing, I would like to compare how one drawing was used to do something similar, but in a manner I find much more effective.

British library: Diagram of the 'Brookes' slave ship,

In the British library is a diagram of the 'Brookes' slave ship, a ship which transported enslaved Africans to the Caribbean. As an image it was used by those that campaigned to end the trans-Atlantic slave trade to raise awareness of the conditions people had to endure when being transported. The associated text by Thomas Clarkson pointed out that traders knew that many of the Africans would die on the voyage and would therefore pack as many people as possible on to their ships - in total there were 609 enslaved men, women and children on board this ship. The diagram communicated the cramped conditions that meant that there were high incidences of diseases such as smallpox, measles, scurvy and dysentery. As a drawing it was fundamental in driving change because it brought home to people what was going on. It also required the work of a good visual artist to visualise the situation, and in conjunction with a writer who was able to highlight the moral injustice and point to the inhumane nature of the atrocity. Thomas Clarkson commented in his History of the Rise, Progress, and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade (1808) that the 'print seemed to make an instantaneous impression of horror upon all who saw it, and was therefore instrumental, in consequence of the wide circulation given it, in serving the cause of the injured Africans'.

Detail: Brookes slave ship diagram

Each and every figure in this drawing is 'real', a realisation that coupled with the fact that there is literally no space between each figure, allows our imaginations to fill in the non-existent gaps with the horror of what we are looking at. This is something Büchel fails to achieve in presenting us with the empty boat. There is no way in Büchel's work that we are made aware of the physical conditions and associated horrible impact of this awful moment of tragedy as the ship sank, nothing to give our imaginations purchase beyond a spectacle for taking selfies. There was no text available, no story to raise awareness, in fact as I write I feel I'm giving the work more context than it deserves. I am also aware that if the work did cost as much as I was told, Büchel could have instead put the money to the development of a refugee field hospital or similar venture, something that he could have used to raise awareness as well as actually help people.

Christoph Büchel: 'Our Boat'

The Art Newspaper has a fairly balanced review of the piece. However I continue to worry about it, I'm not sure Büchel's account of it being something that is an integral part of the media storm, he argues that all of the various commentaries are simply an extended relational practice. This suggests that he is more interested in the work's position as a particular type of art. His decision for instance to have no signage suggests that he has a higher opinion of the general public's awareness of himself and his approach to his work than is warranted. Read the Art Newspaper for a much more balanced view.

It feels wrong to end my thoughts on a visit to Venice on such a negative note, but in difficult times or as the title for the whole Biennale stated, 'May you live in interesting times', the power of art to change things will always be contested, however hopefully by showing the Brookes slave ship diagram, I can also demonstrate that sometimes images do change things.

Venice Biennale 2019 Part one

Venice Biennale 2019 Part two

Venice Biennale 2019 Part three

Reflections on other Venice Biennales

2015

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4