The Ten Best Things to See and Do at the 2012 Sydney Biennale

It's hard not to be tempted by the prospect of international and local artists convening for your art-loving pleasure at the Sydney Biennale's 36th year. This year's festival of art seems to be zooming in to a human scale, but navigating the mammoth program can still lead to a minor crisis.

To help you decide, Concrete Playground has put together this list of ten stand-out attractions at the current incarnation of our local biennial.

1. Cockatoo Island

Cockatoo Island, as always, is the largest single slab of the Biennale's art. Artworks are arranged from the lower levels up the hill, progressing by the artistic directors' design, from mostly white below to colourful above. This year's island is flush with ice-like chains, paper cuts, spiral landscapes and a creeping fog. In a room to one side sits Maria Fernanda Cardoso's Museum of Copulatory Organs — a collection of spiky insect genitalia — which brings a surprising grace to its base, exhibitionist humour. The artist herself will give you a more verbal piece of her mind in July and August.

2. The Galleries

This year's gallery offerings are divided between the Art Gallery of NSW and the Museum of Contemporary Art. The Art Gallery offers a grinding icebreaker from Guido van der Werve, staggering cariboo photography from Subhankar Banerjee and Nipan Oranniwesna's City of Ghost room-spanning ur-city made from powder filtered through stencils of urban streets. The MCA's contribution this year focuses on threads and the body. Alwar Balasubramaniam's Nothing From My Hands cleaves organic lumps out of the wall dappled in shades of grey, Maria Laet's Untitled (Dialogue Series. Ballon and Body) graces movement onto photography and Nicholas Hlobo's Inkwili spreads fine tendrils with watercolours and tea stains.

3. The Mending Project

Artist Lee Mingwei wants to fix you up. as part of his artwork the Mending Project. He'll lurk in the MCA's lighted corners waiting for you to bring in over- or under-loved garments in need of repair and fix it while you wait. Part of the bargain is that you pay Lee with talk (or by being teased) while he stitches your pieces anew. Resurrected clothes will hang on the cavernous walls on MCA level one until the end of the Biennale. Leaving it probably best to bring your summer threads along to hang out in public until September.

Lee will be providing his services on a drop in basis during the Biennale. The MCA also suggests you arrive early in the day for Lee's performance, in case he runs out of thread.

4. Carriageworks

Laying claim to another link in the Biennale's chain of industrial architecture, Carriageworks is taking its first year as a venue for the festival. And its participation runs to dance as well as art. Belgian dance ensemble Rosas bring their serious style to the Carriageworks bay with En Atendant and Cesena. Meanwhile fellow Belgian Ann Veronica Janssens, whose set design features in Rosas' work, will fill the Carriageworks' foyer with her sculpture for the duration of the Biennale.

5. The New Biennale Ferry

This year's Biennale lets go of its attachment to the heave and yaw of a rickety yellow and red ferry from previous years going out to Cockatoo Island. Modern ferries have taken over the commute this year. While you might not capture Moran-winning photo fodder, whether this is considered a good thing or bad is something that depends whether your view of nautical paradise is a rickety ambience or a chunder-free upper deck. And while you hop to the island on a smoother ride, Khadija Baker will let loose her talking hair in her performance piece My Little Voice Can’t Lie across the early days of the festvial.

Khadija Baker will be onboard 12-3pm Jun 27-July.

6. MCA Clothing Exchange

It wasn't long ago that the MCA wore no clothes at all. But for the duration of the Biennale, with Lee Mingwei's Mending Project in-house, it's taking a closer interest in the stitched article. And one of its approaches is to take on what was a new idea not too long ago, but is now standard: find a group of like-minded fashion-lovers, bone them up on the value of recycling over consumption and get them together for an orgy of swapping stuff they have already. For the Biennale, the MCA is throwing its hat in the ring. To swap for said hat, you're encouraged to bring up to ten nice-enough and no-longer loved articles of clothing for the MCA Clothing Exchange, for swapping with other like-minded cohabiters of art and fashion. Will you find the cast-offs of swish fashionistas, or will art lovers' choice of clothes be the strangest cut of all?

The clothing exchange runs 11-5 on July 22.

7. Sydney Students Speak

There's been a lot of experiment across Sydney lately in the short, sharp talk. TEDx and its many local varieties do it for ideas, Bright Club did it for science and Pecha Kucha has some fast words as well. Everyone wants in, with the focus now on younger speakers. The MCA already has regular unfurling of the art ideas of teenagers and the Art Gallery of NSW has had its focus on young polemics. For the Biennale, it's drawing out the easily digested ideas of Sydney's older art students at Sydney Students Speak. Each will deliver a spiel a bare two minutes longer than a regular TED talk, honing in on why you should care about their favourite Biennale artwork. And down in Casula, other young Sydney art students will have frenzied work on display in Casula for 8x8 as well.

Students speak at the Art Gallery Wednesdays between August 1 and September 12. 8x8 is at Casula from July 21 to August 26. If you're an art student interested in your chance to speak, auditioning starts here.

8. The Biennale Bar

FBi is descending on the Biennale's stay at Pier 2/3 in the Rocks. For Fridays during August, the Biennale Bar will be packed with entertainment via FBi Radio, the Thousands and dLux Media Arts. The bar is downstairs at the wooden nub of the art spread across the interior of the pier. Sip among Tiffany Singh's cacophonous wind chimes in Knock On The Sky Listen To The Sound, which invite the public to ring them and later take them home, or run into the Sydney Theatre Company as they invade Honore D'O's Air and Inner during earlier hours.

Note: The STC's Biennale invasions have since been cancelled. The Biennale bar runs 6.30-9.30 pm Fridays during August. Line-ups are now up on the Biennale site for the evenings curated by dLux (August 3), the Thousands (August 10), FBi (August 17), the Biennale team (August 24) and the Sydney Chamber Opera (August 31).

9. Mystery Tours

What's better than spending the day on an island covered in art and dilapidated industrial detritus? Topping said detritus and art with an unexpected encounter with a celebrity art lover. Surprise is de rigour for Cockatoo Island's Mystery Tours, which pair the general public with art lovers from a more public background, the identity of the tour guide remaining a mystery until the tour itself assembles. Tours are free, but need to be booked via Eventbrite,  (02) 8484 8718 or [email protected]

Mystery Tours run Saturdays at 11.30 from July 7.

10. Canvas Presents: Music, Art and You!

There are a few great arts shows on local Sydney radio: Something Else and Arts Tuesday on Eastside, Talking Through Your Arts on 2SER and FBi's contribution to the genre and the Sydney arts scene is the Sunday show Canvas. Canvas normally gets a word in with visiting and local art celebrity, but during the Biennale they're taking their low-key art loving to their elevated FBi Social salon space in Kings Cross. For two nights in July running Canvas Presents will chat with artists live on stage while you sit back and contemplate art with a drink close to hand.

Canvas presents is on July 3 and 31.