The 17th Biennale of Sydney

Overview

Hands up who likes contemporary art? Put ‘em down. Put ‘em up. Down. Up. Sorry, stay with me. The 17th Biennale of Sydney is almost upon us. Three months of glorious wanderings through room after room of contemporary art, hand selected by David Elliott, famed curator, broadcaster and museum director.

Elliott’s biennale, The Beauty of Distance: Songs of Survival in a Precarious Age, is poised to unfold as a revelatory experience. It already boasts all the right ingredients; an extensive list of big-name, not-so-big-name and not-yet-big-name international and Australian artists (to name a few: Paul McCarthy, Yayoi Kusama, Isaac Julien, AES+F, Mikala Dwyer and Newell Harry), a collision of contemporary visual art, performance, film and music (watch out for the premiere of Cockatoo Prison (2010), the Tiger Lillies’ ‘post-punk’ neo-Brechtian opera) and great locations (Cockatoo Island’s awesome Turbine Hall will host Inopportune: Stage One (2004), a nine-car installation by Chinese-born, New York-based artist Cai Guo-Qiang). Definitely a biennale to get amongst.

And while you’re at it, it might be worthwhile contemplating Elliott’s articulation of the theme of his biennale. An accomplished cultural historian, Elliott has long argued the equal value of all cultures in relation to each other (a radical view among an establishment that has predominately seen Western culture as superior). In The Beauty of Distance: Songs of Survival in a Precarious Age (and the five sub-themes: First Peoples and Fourth Worlds, Panopticon to the Wunderkammer, Of Gods and Ghosts, A Hard Rain and The Trickster), Elliott offers a non-hierarchical cross-section of contemporary arts from many cultures that simultaneously, through his elucidation of 'the beauty of distance', seeks critical engagement with the cultural act of making/producing contemporary art. Thought provoking, no?

Image of Inopportune: Stage One by Cai Guo-Qiang. Photograph by Kazuo Ono.