Sunday, June 12, 2011

It’s taken me a whole week to recover from the exhilarating but exhausting whirl of the Venice Biennale preview days, the three days before the doors open to the general public. The entire artworld, it seems, is there to see and be seen.

It’s ridiculous, really. Popular national pavilions attract long queues – one New York art writer reported lining up for three hours to get into the Japan pavilion – whereas if one were only content to come a few days later, after the June 4 opening, one would be able to walk right in.

The Goodman Gallery party for Sigalit Landau

But then of course, one would miss the parties, Every major gallery, every exhibition throws a party for its artists, friends and supporters, and to take the vaporetto from one to another on any of the preview nights is to see palazzo after palazzo lit up and resounding with music and laughter,

South Africa gets a pavilion

The new South African pavilion proved hard to find, located as it is across a canal from the far end of the Arsenale. A tip: just ask for the Press Office, and when you get there, go outside and look across the water, A boat will be there to take you to the other side.

Mary Sibande’s ... of Prosperity

The building itself is beautiful, an old square maritime tower. Inside, Lyndi Sales occupies the lower floor with her silvery hanging installation, Satellite Telescope, and upstairs, Mary Sibande presents two new Sophie figures, the sharp corners of the honeycombed skirt of … of Prosperity echoed in the demolished staircase behind her, Siemon Allen’s remarkable response to the architecture is to present a dramatic hanging of thousands of record labels, a ‘silent archive’ of sound from South Africa.

Siemon Allen’s Labels

*See News for a story on the Venice sale of Nicholas Hlobo’s