Sunday September 25

Week One at the Istanbul Biennial: A picture round up

The 12th Istanbul Biennial is being held in two large orange coloured warehouses, next to the Nesretiye Mosque and the Istanbul Modern on the waterfront.

Posters for the Biennial are up all over town.
The view from Gallery Rampa’s rooftop party was stunning, and
the food and drink just kept coming …
but the best food in town is Bread Fish from a streetside seller behind the spice
market … a freshly caught grilled fish with herbs, cress and onions on crusty Turkish bread. The cost: 3.50 Turkish Lira … R14.

A detail from Mentalklinik’s retrospective, curated by Jerome Sans in Haskoy
Breakfasting with artist Frances Goodman at Café Firuz

Wednesday, September 13, 2011

The yellow freesias I bought the day I got back from Switzerland to bring spring into my apartment have not yet died, but I’m leaving again today. For Istanbul. The 12^th Biennial opens on the 17^th, under the curatorship of Jens Hoffmann and Adriano Perdrosa, and is titled ‘Untitled’. It’s a homage to the late great Felix Gonzales Torres, and I am on a section called ‘Passport’.

One highlight since my return was a performance in a small, sharply raked theatre once used for anatomy demonstrations. Titled After Cardenio, this new play by Jane Taylor had the author reseaching early English literature on the web, and mixing ‘Shakespeare’s world of heightened psychological realism … with the wild novelistic romance and idealism of Cervantes.’

A detail of the backdrop

As the audience files in, artist Penny Siopis is on a ladder, sketching in chalk on the blackboard backdrop, a backdrop added to each night, but designed to be washed clean at the end of the play’s run.

Based on the story of a 17^th century woman hanged for the murder of her infant, the cast of five plus one Gavin Younge designed puppet, the silent effigy of the woman, give a vigorous and often humorous performance of the play, which succeeds in raising a series of ethical and moral questions which linger in the mind long after the play is ended.

Actress Jemma Kahn and her alter ego puppet

Thursday, September 8

Dineo Seshee Bopape, with a vitrine of dying flowers beneath

a frosted glass cover perforated by a plug hole

Every year, the Paul Klee Museum in Bern runs a Sommerakademie in August for 12 young artists, selected from nominees around the world. Nominators are invited to Bern for the final wrap-up events of the 12 day session, and this year, I finally had a nominee selected as a fellow: Dineo Seshee Bopape.

Curator Swiss video artist Pipilotti Rist chose as her theme, Juicy Contaminated Circle: from Art to Life and back, and the discussions of the first wrap up afternoon were followed by a performance which involved the fellows serving juicy contaminated cocktails to the assembly. You drank them at your own risk. Many took the risk. Several times over.

A selection of juicy contaminated cocktails

The evening finished with a buffet dinner in a marquee set up next to the swiftly flowing Aare. By this time, the rain was bucketing down, and I felt sorry for the catering team trying to get a braai going under umbrellas, but in true art world fashion, the party went on regardless …

Cooking in the rain