Writings, News
Jo Higgins
Art Guide Australia: Home Truths - feature story
Art Guide Australia: Home Truths - feature story
News, Writings
Jo Higgins
Artlink magazine's 'Hyphen' issue published
Artlink magazine's 'Hyphen' issue published
Writings
Jo Higgins
ABC Arts: 'Air' at QAGOMA
ABC Arts: 'Air' at QAGOMA
Writings
Jo Higgins
ABC Arts: Megan Cope is building a living, ...
ABC Arts: Megan Cope is building a living, breathing artwork on Minjerribah
Writings, Events
Jo Higgins
Art Collector: Pull Focus interview with Abdul ...
Art Collector: Pull Focus interview with Abdul Abdullah & Abdul-Rahman Abdullah

20th Biennale of Sydney: The future is here it's just not evenly distributed

The 20th Biennale of Sydney has just opened, under the Artistic Direction of Hayward Gallery curator Stephanie Rosenthal. The future is already here: it’s just not evenly distributed runs until 5 June at venues across Sydney including Carriageworks, the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Artspace and Cockatoo Island.

I had the opportunity and privilege to contribute to the Biennale’s exhibition guide, writing about 14 international and Australian artists. The texts are all posted online (though they only credit the authors in the hard copy version for some reason...)

Artists and links to text below.

Céline Condorelli, Structure for Communicating with Wind, from the series ‘Additionals’, 2012–13/2016, metallicised space blanket, curtain tape, approximately 320 x 400 cm. Installation view (2016) at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia for the 20th Biennale of Sydney. Courtesy the artist This version was created for the 20th Biennale of Sydney. Photographer: Ben Symons

Bhakti Kher, Six Women, 2013–15, plaster of paris, wood, metal, approximately 123 x 61 x 95.5 cm each. Installation view (2016) at Cockatoo Island for the 20th Biennale of Sydney. Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth, London and Zürich. Photograph: Ben Symons

Minouk Lim, Strange Fruit, 2016, mixed-media installation, dimensions variable. Installation view (2016) at Carriageworks for the 20th Biennale of Sydney. Courtesy the artist. Created for the 20th Biennale of Sydney. Photograph: Tim da-Rin

Falke Pisano, Embassy of Thought diagrams: The Real, 2016. Courtesy the artist

OTHER POSTS

Celeste Boursier-Mougenot at the NGV

I’m in Melbourne for the weekend and yesterday chanced upon Clinamen, the sculptural installation by French artist and composer Celeste Boursier-Mougenot that’s currently in residence on Level 3 of the NGV International.

My first encounter with Boursier-Mougenot’s practice was back in 2010, when I experienced his commission for The Curve at the Barbican in London. A trained musician, Boursier-Mougenot’s acoustic installations employ chance and indeterminacy in a contemplative dance of parts that explore the laws of nature and the rhythms of everyday life. At the Barbican, it was a walk-through aviary of zebra finches. The space was full of cymbals and electric guitars that transformed the feeding, bathing and nesting activities of the finches into a delicate and joyful soundscape that was honestly like no other.

Celeste Boursier-Mougenot, Clinamen, 2013.

In Clinamen, Boursier-Mougenot presents a collection of white porcelain bowls, which are gently and continuously swept around a bright blue pool of water by submarine currents. The bowls – there may have been 100 of them – each have different depths and scales that affect the depth of the chimes they produce upon collision.

These deep and meditative peals recall the strange nostalgia of old clanging church bells and this ad hoc score is unsurprisingly conducive to moments of profound contemplation.

 Visually, the swirling bowls suggest everything from junk boats on the harbour to universes in orbit. Perhaps it was the headspace I was in, but these circling bowls, moving silently through the water, only to chime deeply and repeatedly upon chance collision, spoke to me of loneliness, and then fate, and then hope.

I don’t know how long I sat there for – it wouldn’t have been especially long – but I left feeling moved, calmed and quietly elated that art, once again, could offer such a space for reflection.

OTHER POSTS

Educating People Like Us

Since late 2014 I’ve been working with UNSW Galleries as an education consultant to develop a series of educational resources for their touring exhibition People Like Us. It’s just opened at UNSW Galleries and will set off on a 15 stop national tour from January 2016.

Su-Mei Tse, Sound for an Insomniac, 2007

I’ve just written an article about the process for Museums & Galleries New South Wales which you can read here.

OTHER POSTS

I acknowledge the Gadigal and Bidjigal peoples of the Eora nation, the traditional owners of the unceded land on which I live and work and I pay my respects to their Elders, past and present.