Sydney Biennale – Part One

I begun my task, today, to see as much of the Biennale of Sydney as possible, by heading of to the Art Gallery Of NSW. Actually, task is probably the wrong word, because it’s going to be an absolute pleasure, but with the works on display at twenty or thirty venues, I’ll need to have a methodology about this. Anyway, there were three works on display at the AGNSW that I really liked and a lot of works I felt fairly indifferent about.

Unfortunately, I don’t recall the name of the creator of my favourite work, as I can’t actually cross-reference it to either the Biennale Guide nor the website. Imagine if you would something about 30 feet wide by six feet deep and four feet high, a three dimensional map of the world created out of many layers of canvas. I liked the creative concept, the enactment, and the craft that went into this work. Actually, maybe it’s not part of the Biennale at all?

I also really liked the work by John Reynolds. The NZ-artist has created a memorable work featuring hundreds, maybe thousands of words printed on boxes, all displayed on a wall. While I sometimes think works like this can seem all a little contrived and PC, especially in the choice of words, I thought this work showed humour and intelligence.

The most memorable works, though, were probably those paintings by Biljana Djurdjevic. Set inside a swimming change room or was it a Nazi gas chamber (or something like that), the images were of frightened, disturbed people with wide eyes and pale skin. I interpreted one work, “Paradise Lost” as being about child abuse, though I could be wrong.

Overall though, well worth a look…